Weary with my hurried journey to no purpose, I was going early in the evening to the public baths, when to my surprise I espied an old companion of mine named Socrates. He was sitting on the ground, half covered with a rag-tag cloak, and looking like somebody else, he was so miserably wan and thin,--in fact, just like a street beggar; so that though he used to be my friend and close acquaintance, I had two minds about speaking to him. "How now, friend Socrates!" said I: "what does this mean? Why are you tricked out like this? What crime have you been guilty of? Why, you look as though your family had given you up for dead and held your funeral long ago, the probate judge had appointed guardians for your children, and your wife, disfigured by her long mourning, having cried herself almost blind, was being worried by her parents to sit up and take notice of things, and look for a new marriage. Yet now, all of a sudden, here you come before us like a wretched ghost from the dead, to turn everything upside down.'" "O Aristomenes!" said he, "it's clear that you don't know the slippery turns, the freaks, and the never-ending tricks of fortune." As he said this, he hid his face, crimson with shame, in his one garment of patches and tatters. I could not bear such a miserable sight, and tried to raise him from the ground. But he kept saying with his head all covered up, "Let me alone! let me alone! let Fortune have her way with me!" However, I finally persuaded him to go with me; and at the same time pulling off one of my own garments, I speedily clothed him, or at any rate covered him. I next took him to a bath, scrubbed and oiled him myself, and laboriously rubbed the matted dirt off him. Having done all I could, though tired out myself, I supported his feeble steps, and with great difficulty brought him to my inn. There I made him lie down on a bed, gave him plenty of food, braced him up with wine, and entertained him with the news of the day. Pretty soon our conversation took a merry turn; we cracked jokes, and grew noisy as we chattered. All of a sudden, heaving a bitter sigh from the bottom of his chest, and striking his forehead violently with his right hand, he said:--