I was listening so attentively to this speech that I did not notice the
flight of Ascyltos, and while I was pacing the gardens, engulfed in this
flood-tide of rhetoric, a large crowd of students came out upon the
portico, having, it would seem, just listened to an extemporaneous
declamation, of I know not whom, the speaker of which had taken
exceptions to the speech of Agamemnon. While, therefore, the young men
were making fun of the sentiments of this last speaker, and criticizing
the arrangement of the whole speech, I seized the opportunity and went
after Ascyltos, on the run; but, as I neither held strictly to the road,
nor knew where the inn was located, wherever I went, I kept coming back
to the same place, until, worn out with running, and long since dripping
with sweat, I approached a certain little old woman who sold country
vegetables.