d quiver with the motley life of a
huge city: beggars and jugglers, dancers and musicians, gilded youths in
their chariots, and daughters of joy looking out from their windows, all
intoxicated with the mere delight of living and the gladness of a
new day. The pagan populace of Antioch--reckless, pleasure-loving,
spendthrift--were preparing for the Saturnalia. But all this Hermas had
renounced. He cleft his way through the crowd slowly, like a reluctant
swimmer weary of breasting the tide.

At the corner of the street where the narrow, populous Lane of the
Camel-drivers crossed the Colonnades, a storyteller had bewitched
a circle of people around him. It was the same old tale of love and
adventure that many generations have listened to; but the lively fancy
of the hearers rent it new interest, and the wit of the improviser drew
forth sighs of interest and shouts of laughter.

A yellow-haired girl on the edge of the throng turned, as Hermas passed,
and smiled in his face. She put out her hand and caught him by the
sleeve.

"Stay," she said, "and laugh a bit with us. I know who you are--the son
of Demetrius. You must have bags of gold. Why do you look so black? Love
is alive yet."

Hermas shook off her hand, but not ungently.

"I don't know what you mean," he said. "You are mistaken in me. I am
poorer than you are."

But as he passed on, he felt the warm touch of her fingers through the
cloth on his arm. It seemed as if she had plucked him by the heart.

He went out by the Western Gate, under the golden cherubim that the
Emperor Titus had stolen from the ruined Temple of Jerusalem and fixed
upon the arch of triumph. He turned to the left, and climbed the hill to
the road that led to the Grove of Daphne.

In all the world there was no other highway as beautiful. It wound for
five miles along the foot of the mountains, among gardens and villas,
plantations of myrtles and mulberries, with wide outlooks over the
valley of Orontes and the distant, shimmering sea.

The richest of all the dwellings was the House of the Golden Pillars,
the mansion of Demetrius. He had won the favor of the apostate Emperor
Julian, whose vain efforts to restore the worship of the heathen gods,
some twenty years ago, had opened an easy way to wealth and power for
all who would mock and oppose Christianity. Demetrius was not a sincere
fanatic like his royal master; but he was bitter enough in his professed
scorn of the new religion, to make