midnight
When Philippus entered his old friend 's lofty and spacious study he found him still up , sitting before a great number of rolls of manuscript , and so absorbed in his work that he did not notice his late-coming comrade till the leech bid him good-evening . His only reply was an unintelligible murmur , for some minutes longer the old man was lost in study ; at last , however , he looked up at Philippus , impatiently tossing an ivory ruler-which he had been using to open and smooth the papyrus on to the table ; and at the same moment a dark bundle under it began to move -- this was the old man 's slave who had long been sleeping there . Three lamps on the writing-table threw a bright light on the old man and his surroundings , while the physician , who had thrown himself on a couch in a corner of the large room , remained in the dark . What startled the midnight student was his housemate 's unwonted silence ; it disturbed him as the cessation of the clatter of the wheel disturbs a man who lives in a mill . He looked at his friend with surprised enquiry , but Philippus was dumb , and the old man turned once more to his rolls of manuscript . But he had lost the necessary concentration ; his brown hand , in which the blue veins stood out like cords , fidgeted with the scrolls and the ivory rule , and his sunken lips , which had before been firmly closed , were now twitching restlessly . The man 's whole aspect was singular and not altogether pleasing : his lean brown figure was bent with age , his thoroughly Egyptian face , with broad cheekbones and outstanding ears , was seamed and wrinkled like oak-bark ; his scalp was bare of its last hair , and his face clean-shaved , but for a few tufts of grey hair by way of beard , sprouting from the deep furrows on his cheeks and chin , like reeds from the narrow bed of a brook ; the razor could not reach them there , and they gave him an untidy and uncared-for appearance .