"Yes, indeed, the gods of the higher zones have treated me favourably.
But what matter one's possessions if one lacks the one thing desired? An
unsatisfied wish makes the rich as poor, in his gilded, brightly painted
palace, in the midst of his heaps of grain, of perfumes and precious
things, as the most wretched workman of the Memnonia, who sops up with
sawdust the blood of the bodies, or the semi-nude negro driving on the
Nile his frail papyrus-boat under the burning midday sun."