tentively to this speech that I did not notice the
flight of Ascyltos, and while I was pacing the gardens, engulfed in this
flood-tide of rhetoric, a large crowd of students came out upon the
portico, having, it would seem, just listened to an extemporaneous
declamation, of I know not whom, the speaker of which had taken
exceptions to the speech of Agamemnon. While, therefore, the young men
were making fun of the sentiments of this last speaker, and criticizing
the arrangement of the whole speech, I seized the opportunity and went
after Ascyltos, on the run; but, as I neither held strictly to the road,
nor knew where the inn was located, wherever I went, I kept coming back
to the same place, until, worn out with running, and long since dripping
with sweat, I approached a certain little old woman who sold country
vegetables.

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.

"Please, mother," I wheedled, "you don't know where I lodge, do you?"
Delighted with such humorous affability, "What's the reason I don't" she
replied, and getting upon her feet, she commenced to walk ahead of me. I
took her for a prophetess until, when presently we came to a more obscure
quarter, the affable old lady pushed aside a crazy-quilt and remarked,
"Here's where you ought to live," and when I denied that I recognized the
house, I saw some men prowling stealthily between the rows of name-boards
and naked prostitutes. Too late I realized that I had been led into a
brothel. After cursing the wiles of the little old hag, I covered my
head and commenced to run through the middle of the night-house to the
exit opposite, when, lo and behold! whom should I meet on the very
threshold but Ascyltos himself, as tired as I was, and almost dead; you
would have thought that he had been brought by the self-same little old
hag! I smiled at that, greeted him cordially, and asked him what he was
doing in such a scandalous place.

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH.

Wiping away the sweat with his hands, he replied, "If you only knew what
I have gone through!" "What was it?" I demanded. "A most respectable
looking person came up to me," he made reply, "while I was wandering all
over the town and could not find where I had left my inn, and very
graciously offered to guide me. He led me through some very dark and
crooked alleys, to this place, pulled out his tool, and commenced to beg
me to comply with his appetite. A whore had already vacated her cell for
an as, and he had laid