m nor fled from them when they surrounded him;
but now when they were gone he slowly turned his head in the direction
by which they had departed. His gaze wandered over the wet flagstones
of the street, over two corpses stretched on them at a little distance,
over the figure of a female slave who lay forsaken near the wall of one
of the houses, exerting her last energies to drink from the turbid
rain-water which ran down the kennel by her side; and still his eyes
remained unregardful of all that they encountered. The next object
which by chance attracted his vacant attention was a deserted temple.
This solitary building fixed him immediately in contemplation--it was
destined to open a new and a warning scene in the dark tragedy of his
closing life.

In his course through the city he had passed unheeded many temples far
more prominent in situation, far more imposing in structure, than this.
It was a building of no remarkable extent or extraordinary beauty. Its
narrow porticoes and dark doorway were more fitted to repel than to
invite the eye; but it had one attraction, powerful above all glories
of architecture and all grandeur of situation to arrest in him those
wandering faculties whose sterner and loftier aims were now suspended
for ever; it was dedicated to Serapis--to the idol which had been the
deity of his first worship, and the inspiration of his last struggle
for the restoration of his faith. The image of the god, with the
three-headed monster encircled by a serpent, obedient beneath his hand,
was carved over the portico.

What flood of emotions rushed into the vacant mind of Ulpius at the
instant when he discerned the long-loved, well-known image of the
Egyptian god, there was nothing for some moments outwardly visible in
him to betray. His moral insensibility appeared but to be deepened as
his gaze was now fixed with rigid intensity on the temple portico.
Thus he continued to remain motionless, as if what he saw had petrified
him where he stood, when the clouds, which had been closing in deeper
and deeper blackness as the morning advanced, and which, still charged
with electricity, were gathering to revive the storm of the past night,
burst abruptly into a loud peal of thunder over his head.

At that warning sound, as if it had been the supernatural signal
awaited to arouse him, as if in one brief moment it awakened every
recollection of all that he had resolutely attempted during the night
of thunder