Over its dreary wastes still reigned the ruthless ambition which had exiled love from his youth, and friendship from his manhood, and which was destined to end its mission of destruction by banishing tranquility from his age.
Scowling fiercely at all around and above him, he sought the loneliest and shadiest streets.

Solitude had now become a necessity to his heart.

The 'great gulph' of his unshared aspirations had long since socially separated him for ever from his fellow-men.

He thought, laboured, and suffered for himself alone.
To describe the years of unrewarded labour and unalleviated hardship endured by Ulpius in the place of his punishment; to dwell on the day that brought with it--whatever the season in the world above--the same unwearying inheritance of exertion and fatigue; to chronicle the history of night after night of broken slumber one hour, of wearying thought the next, would be to produce a picture from the mournful monotony of which the attention of the reader would recoil with disgust.

It will be here sufficient to observe, that the influence of the same infatuation which had nerved him to the defence of the assaulted temple, and encouraged him to attempt his ill-planned restoration of Paganism, had preserved him through sufferings under which stronger and younger men would have sunk for ever; had prompted his determination to escape from his slavery, and had now brought him to Rome--old, forsaken, and feeble as he was--to risk new perils and suffer new afflictions for the cause to which, body and soul, he had ruthlessly devoted himself for ever.
Urged, therefore, by his miserable delusion, he had now entered a city where even his name was unknown, faithful to his frantic project of opposing himself, as a helpless, solitary man, against the people and government of an Empire.