I have never seen any literary work more
beautifully enshrined.
When Agathemer and I were in the library he shut and locked the door at
the top of my uncle's private stair, as he had the door at the bottom of
it. The two keys he hid far apart, where neither was at all likely to be
found easily or soon. He had laid the knives, tinder-boxes and bag of food
on a table. He went to the case containing my uncle's most highly prized
treasures. From it he took the ebony box, opened it and took out two of
the cylinders. From these he removed the rolls embodying the grammarians'
comments. These rolls he put back in the box, shut it, returned it to the
case and closed the case.
The two cylinders he had laid on the table by the things which he had
brought up stairs. Inside each cylinder he placed a knife, a tinder-box,
and a selection of the food. The bag, with what remained of the food, he
tied up again. He handed me one cylinder.
"Now," he said, "we are prepared to escape. My idea is to leave no trace
of how we leave this villa, to have no one see us leave, to have nothing
with us which could identify us after we have left. We are to go down the
secret stair, crawl out through the big lower drain pipe, hide in the
bushes till dark, take to the woods, hide by day, creep northward by
night, and, if we succeed in reaching a district where no one would
recognize us, press on northward boldly, passing ourselves off as runaway
slaves if anyone encounters us.
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