During the past half year his
health had grown worse, and he talked at times of returning to the
Surrentine villa, if perchance that sweeter air might soothe him,
but in the present state of things--Totila had just laid siege to
Neapolis--the removal did not seem feasible. Moreover, Decius
loved Rome, and thought painfully of dying elsewhere than within her
walls.
There was a footfall at the door, and Basil entered. 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.
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