At this point, Scaurus’s handwriting became irregular and sometimes not easy to read. “I have been interrupted again,” he said. “This time, it was Flaccus. Now I take up my pen positively for the last time, wondering why I take it up, and why I ramble on in this maundering fashion. I think it is because I feel as though you and I were dreaming together, and I am loth to leave off. There is no one else in the world with whom I can thus dream in partnership. This shall really be my last dreaming. “Do not be vexed with me, Quintus, for charging Flaccus _not_ to send you a copy of this little book. He told me that for some time past you had been interested in these subjects, and that, if he could find another copy, he intended to forward it to you. The rascal added something about ‘mere literary interest.’ I suspect him of Christian tendencies. Your recent letters have reassured me. But I cannot help feeling that there have been moments with you, as with me, when the ‘interest’ was more than ‘merely literary.’ I had half thought of sending you my copy. But I shall not. The subject is too fascinating—like chess; and, like chess, it leads to nothing. I was glad to hear—in your last letter, I think—that you were now giving your mind to practical affairs. If you decide on the army at once, there is likely to be work soon in Illyria. “Things also look cloudy, not black yet but cloudy, in Syria. In spite of the thrashing they got from the late Emperor, these Jews have not yet learned their lesson. They are as stubborn and obstinate as Hannibal made us out to be:— _‘Gens quae cremato fortis ab Ilio_ _Jactata Tuscis aequoribus sacra_ _Natosque maturosque patres_ _Pertulit Ausonias ad urbes,_ _Duris ut ilex tonsa bipennibus_ _Nigrae feraci frondis in Algido_ _Per damna, per caedes, ab ipso_ _Ducit opes animumque ferro.’_ “How every word of this would suit the Jews! I mean in their past history. According to my news (from a friend of Rufus the new Governor) it may suit their future, too; and we may have to take Jerusalem again. Then—to quote Isaiah and Horace in one—there will be another ‘lopping of the boughs’ in the future. But I mean their past. I wonder whether you understand what I am dreaming of. Probably not, and it is not worth explaining. Nor indeed am I well enough to explain clearly and briefly. I have been going in too much for books of late, and feel at this moment (to quote an old friend) ‘dead from the waist down.’ However—as I am not going to write about these Jews again—I will scribble my last thoughts to the end.