Nor was he
sensible of pain or great weariness, for his mind was far away from the
sun-heated desert of the eastern Thebaid. He spoke seldom, and held
himself aloof from his fellow prisoners. He regarded his taskmasters
as if they were written authority no more animate than watered scrolls
of papyrus. No one doubted from the beginning that he was high-born,
and this mark of a great fall might have exposed him to abuse; but his
great strength and unusual deportment did not invite mistreatment. In
short, he was looked upon as mildly mad.
When Kenkenes had rejected the gods, hope, sundered from faith, groped
wildly and desperately. In his rare moments of cheer he could not
anticipate freedom without trusting to something, and in his
misanthropy his doubt had placed no limit on its scope, questioning the
honor of king or slave. In these better moments he wanted to believe
in something.
So constantly had his sorrows attended him that he had come to dread
the night, when there was neither event nor labor to interrupt their
dominance over his mind. He caught eagerly at any less troublous
problem that might suggest itself, for he felt that he had been
conquered by his plight.
As he lay by night, apart from the rest of the prisoners, he gazed at
one glittering star that stood in the north.
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