Nor, indeed, did my education qualify me for any delicacy in other enjoyments; so that in the midst of plenty I loathed everything.

Taste for elegance I had none; and the greatest of corporeal blisses I felt no more from than the lowest animal.

In a word, as while a miser I had plenty without daring to use it, so now I had it without appetite.
"But if I was not very happy in the height of my enjoyment, so I afterwards became perfectly miserable; being soon overtaken by disease, and reduced to distress, till at length, with a broken constitution and broken heart, I ended my wretched days in a jail: nor can I think the sentence of Minos too mild, who condemned me, after having taken a large dose of avarice, to wander three years on the banks of Cocytus, with the knowledge of having spent the fortune in the person of the grandson which I had raised in that of the grandfather.
"The place of my birth, on my return to the world, was Constantinople, where my father was a carpenter.

The first thing I remember was, the triumph of Belisarius, which was, indeed, most noble show; but nothing pleased me so much as the figure of Gelimer, king of the African Vandals, who, being led captive on this occasion, reflecting with disdain on the mutation of his own fortune, and on the ridiculous empty pomp of the conqueror, cried out, VANITY, VANITY, ALL IS MERE VANITY.' "I was bred up to my father's trade, and you may easily believe so low a sphere could produce no adventures worth your notice.

However, I married a woman I liked, and who proved a very tolerable wife.