He had neither looked on them 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.