So also does human life trickle away, though it is measured not by water but by events. This is a profound truth, to be grasped only in old age when a man’s time runs away to nothing, in monotony. A single day in an eventful period leaves its mark upon him and can seem longer than a year or so of monotonous labor that leaves his heart unchanged. I learned this truth in the city of Akhetaton, where my time flowed smoothly by like the current of the Nile and my life was a brief dream—a lovely, fading song. The ten years I spent in the shadow of Pharaoh Akhnaton in the golden palace of the new city were shorter than any one of the years of my youth: those years of travel and of change. At Akhetaton I added nothing either to my wisdom or to my science; rather I drew on what I had gathered in so many countries, as a bee survives the winter on the honey it has stored up in the comb. Yet, as running water alters the shape of a stone, so time may have changed my heart; though of this I remained unaware.
