As for the rest! Well, yes, he had had more trivial pleasures too.

He had not been received as other Egyptians were: half-educated philosophers--who called themselves Sages and assumed a mystic and pompously solemn demeanor, Astrologers, Rhetoricians, poverty-stricken but witty and venemous satirists, physicians making a display of the learning of their forefathers, fanatical theologians--always ready to avail themselves of other weapons than reason and dogma in their bitter contests over articles of faith, hermits and recluses--as foul in mind as they were dirty in their persons, corn-merchants and usurers with whom it was dangerous to conclude a bargain without witnesses.

Orion was none of these.

As the handsome, genial, and original-minded son of the rich and noble Governor, Mukaukas George, he was welcomed as a sort of ambassador; whatever the golden youth of the city allowed themselves was permitted to him.

His purse was as well lined as theirs, his health and vigor far more enduring; and his horses had beaten theirs in three races, though he drove them himself and did not trust them to paid charioteers.