"My mother? Yes, I pity her, but I do not love her; it makes no difference to me what happens to her—all I need is her help. … Yes, I am a wild beast! and a wild beast beaten and tracked to its lair, and the only distinction is that I am able, if I choose, to quit this false, wicked life; I can do what the wild beast cannot—I can kill myself. I hate my father, there is no one I love … neither my mother, nor my friends but how about Pamphilius?"
And again he remembered his one friend. He began to recall the last interview, and their conversation, and Pamphilius' words, how, according to their teaching, Christ had said: Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Can that be true?
As he went on with his thoughts and recollections, he recalled Pamphilius' sweet, joyous, passionless face, and he felt inclined to believe in what Pamphilius said.
"What am I, in reality?" he asked himself. "Who am I? A man seeking well-being. I have sought for it in animal pleasures, and have not found it. And all living beings, like myself, also failed to find it. All are evil, and suffer. If any man is always happy, it is because he is seeking for nothing. He says that there are many such, and that all men will be such if they obey their Master's teachings. What if this is the truth? Whether it is the truth or not, it attracts me to it, and I am going."
Thus said Julius to himself, and he left the grove resolved never again to return home, and he bent his steps to the town where the Christians lived.
CHAPTER III
Julius went on boldly and cheerfully, and the farther he went and the more vividly he represented to himself the life of the Christians, remembering all to himself that Pamphilius had said, the more joyous he became in spirit.
