189 292
189
captivity
sauntered over to the true
Rome.
There was much he saw and
heard, and he would gladly
have reported on these
rambles to his father, but
his father avoided talking
with him. He would gladly
have reported on them to his
friends, but he had no friends.
He was mocked on account
of his physical defects, hated
because he wrote, read, and
calculated better than them
and even so did not work.
He would have carried on
with these pleasant, solitary
wanderings for the rest of his
life, scraping by on handouts
from the state and his
patron, dipping into books,
parasitically, carefree and
undemanding, had something
not happened.