3/24 He was carelessly clad, walked with head bent, and had the look of one who spends his life in wearisome idleness. Without speaking, however, he threw himself upon a couch and lay staring with vacant eye at the bronze panels of the vaulted ceiling. For some minutes silence continued; then Decius, a roll in his hand, stepped to his kinsman's side and indicated with his finger a passage of the manuscript. What Basil read might be rendered thus: 'I am hateful to myself. For though born to do something worthy of a man, I am now not only incapable of action, but even of thought.' 'Who says that ?' he asked, too indolent to glance at the beginning of the roll. |