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"But," said the other, " the law does not yet speak to you thus, for you can remain on the morrow, since you came after midday."
"I am delighted," said Apollonius, "with your hospitality, and indeed you seem to me to be straining the law for my sake."
"Yes indeed, and I would I could break it," said the king, "on your behalf; but tell me this, Apollonius, did not the camels bring you from Babylon which they say you were riding ?"
"They did," he said, "and Vardanes gave them us."
"Will they then be able to carry you on, after they have come already so many stades from Babylon?"
Apollonius made no answer, but Damis said: "O king, our friend here does not understand anything about our journey, nor about the races among which we shall find ourselves in the future; but he regards our passage into India as mere child's play, under the impression that he will everywhere have you and Vardanes to help him. I assure you, the true condition of the camels has not been acknowledged to you; for they are in such an evil state that we could carry them rather than they us, and we must have others. For if they collapse anywhere in the wilderness of India, we," he continued, "shall have to sit down and drive off the vultures and wolves from the camels, and as no one will drive them off from us when we shall perish too."
The king answered accordingly and said: "I will remedy this, for I will give you other camels, and you need four I think, and the satrap ruling the Indus will send back four others to Babylon. But I have a herd of camels on the Indus, all of them white."
"And," said Damis, "will you not also give us a guide, O king?"
"Yes, of course," he answered, "and I will give a camel to the guide and provisions, and I will write a letter to Iarchas, the oldest of the sages, praying him to welcome Apollonius as warmly as he did myself, and to welcome you also as philosophers and followers of a divine man."
And forthwith the Indian gave them gold and precious stones and linen and a thousand other such things. And Apollonius said that he had enough gold already, because Vardanes had given it to the guide on the sly; but that he would accept the linen robes, because they were like the cloaks worn by the ancient and genuine inhabitants of Attica.
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