"What dost thou say to me, my prince?" he said. "How is it that thou beseechest me--me, the suppliant, praying thy help for mine own ends? But hear me! Thou aspirest to that place of which I have no knowledge, among peoples whose paths I never cross, into the calling of the great! Yet, though most unequipped to yield thee support, I am thy substance. Use me! Thou knowest my price." Agrippa smiled. "Though I die owing even mine embalmer, I shall pay thee that debt. I have said. And now to the process. What money hast thou?" Agrippa was silent and Marsyas, watching his face, waited. "I need," the prince said slowly, "twenty thousand." Marsyas got upon his feet, and for a moment there was silence. "I will get it for thee," he said. CHAPTER VII THE BONDMAN OF HATE In a city like Ptolemais, where many pagans lived extravagantly and many Jews lived thriftily, there were, as naturally follows, many money-lenders among the sons of Abraham. "Seek them all," was Agrippa's charge, "but Peter, the usurer. Him, thou hadst better avoid." The young Essene laid aside the prince's dress, with its embroidery of precious metal, and, getting into a simpler garment affected by the stewards to men of rank, went out into the city to borrow twenty thousand drachmae. He did not get the twenty thousand drachmae, but he found, instead, that Herod Agrippa was the most notorious bankrupt in the world. Being a Jew and by heritage thrifty, the discovery shook him in his respect for the prince, but at the same time a resolution shaped itself in him against the usurers. But, on a certain day, he returned to the little house in the suburbs of the city to report that he had been placidly refused by every money-lending Jew or Gentile, except Peter, in the seaport. But he delivered his tidings unmoved. "Be of hope," he said to Cypros, whose head drooped at the news; "there are many untried ways." He went again into the city, and visited the khans. There might be new-comers who were money-lenders in other cities. There were such as guests in Ptolemais, but from their lips he learned that Agrippa was black-listed from the Adriatic to the Euphrates; but Marsyas did not return to the house in the suburbs that night. The weight of his obligation was too heavy to endure the added burden which the sight of Agrippa's suspense had become. He went to the rabbis of Ptolemais; they told him that they were not money-lenders. He applied to the prefect of the city, who laughed at him. Hoping that the name of Agrippa as a bankrupt had not penetrated into the fields he journeyed into the country-side of Syria and tried an oil-merchant, a rustic, rich and unlettered. But the oil-merchant came up to Ptolemais and made inquiry, shrugged his shoulders, glowered at Marsyas and went back to his groves.