After much clanking, the door yielded, and an elderly servant, the freedman Eugenius, offered greeting to his lord.
Basil's first question was whether Decius had been there; he learnt that his kinsman was now in the house, having come yesterday to reside here from the Anician palace beyond the Tiber.
'Tell him at once that I am here.

Stay; I dare say he is in the library.

I will go to him.' He passed through the atrium, adorned with ancestral busts and with the consular fasces which for centuries had signified nothing, through a room hung with tapestry and floored with fine mosaic, through the central court, where the fountain was dry, and by a colonnade reached the secluded room which was called library, though few books remained out of the large collection once guarded here.

In a sunny embrasure, a codex open on his knees, sat the pale student; seeing Basil, he started up in great surprise, and, when they had embraced, regarded him anxiously.
'How is this?
What has happened?
Some calamity, I see.' 'Seek some word, O Decius, to utter more than that.

I have suffered worse than many deaths.' 'My best, my dearest Basil!' murmured the other tenderly.