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+The Project Gutenberg EBook A Thorny Path, by Georg Ebers, v7
+#97 in our series by Georg Ebers
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+Title: A Thorny Path, Volume 7.
+
+Author: Georg Ebers
+
+Release Date: April, 2004  [EBook #5536]
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+[This file was first posted on July 19, 2002]
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A THRONY PATH, BY EBERS, V7 ***
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+This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
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+[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
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+
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+
+A THORNY PATH
+
+By Georg Ebers
+
+Volume 7.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+The high-priest of Serapis presided over the sacrifices to be offered
+this morning.  Caesar had given beasts in abundance to do honor to the
+god; still, the priest had gone but ill-disposed to fulfill his part; for
+the imperial command that the citizens' houses should be filled with the
+troops, who were also authorized to make unheard-of demands on their
+hosts, had roused his ire against the tyrant, who, in the morning, after
+his bath, had appeared to him unhappy indeed, but at the same time a
+gifted and conscientious ruler, capable of the highest and grandest
+enterprise.
+
+Melissa, in obedience to the lady Euryale, had taken an hour's rest, and
+then refreshed herself by bathing.  She now was breakfasting with her
+venerated friend, and Philostratus had joined them.  He was able to tell
+them that a swift State galley was already on its way to overtake and
+release her father and brother; and when he saw how glad she was to hear
+it, how beautiful, fresh, and pure she was, he thought to himself with
+anxiety that it would be a wonder if the imperial slave to his own
+passions should not desire to possess this lovely creature.
+
+Euryale also feared this, and Melissa realized what filled them with
+anxiety; yet she by no means shared the feeling, and the happy confidence
+with which she tried to comfort her old friends, at the same time
+pacified and alarmed them.  It seemed to her quite foolish and vain to
+suppose that the emperor, the mighty ruler of the world, should fall in
+love with her, the humble, obscure gem-cutter's child, who aspired to one
+suitor alone.  It was merely as a patient wishes for the physician, she
+assured herself, that the emperor wished for her presence--Philostratus
+had understood that.  During the night she had certainly been seized with
+great fears, but, as she now thought, without any cause.  What she really
+had to dread was that she might be falsely judged by his followers;
+still, she cared nothing about all these Romans.  However, she would beg
+Euryale to see Diodoros, and to tell him what forced her to obey the
+emperor's summons, if he should send for her.  It was highly probable
+that the sick man had been informed of her interview with Caracalla, and,
+as her betrothed, he must be told how she felt toward Caesar; for this
+was his right, and jealous agitation might injure him.
+
+Her face so expressed the hope and confidence of a pure heart that when,
+after a little time, she withdrew, Euryale said to the philosopher:
+
+"We must not alarm her more!  Her trustful innocence perhaps may protect
+her better than anxious precautions."
+
+And Philostratus agreed, and assured her that in any case he expected
+good results for Melissa, for she was one of those who were the elect of
+the gods and whom they chose to be their instruments.  And then he
+related what wonderful influence she had over Caesar's sufferings, and
+praised her with his usual enthusiastic warmth.
+
+When Melissa returned, Philostratus had left the matron.  She was again
+alone with Euryale, who reminded her of the lesson conveyed in the
+Christian words that she had explained to her yesterday.  Every deed,
+every thought, had some influence on the way in which the fulfillment of
+time would come for each one; and when the hour of death was over, no
+regrets, repentance, or efforts could then alter the past.  A single
+moment, as her own young experience had taught her, was often sufficient
+to brand the name of an estimable man.  Till now, her way through life
+had led along level paths, through meadows and gardens, and others had
+kept their eyes open for her; now she was drawing near to the edge of a
+precipice, and at every turning, even at the smallest step, she must
+never forget the threatening danger.  The best will and the greatest
+prudence could not save her if she did not trust to a higher guidance;
+and then she asked the girl to whom she raised her heart when she prayed;
+and Melissa named Isis and other gods, and lastly the manes of her dead
+mother.
+
+During this confession, old Adventus appeared, to summon the girl to his
+sovereign.  Melissa promised to follow him immediately; and, when the old
+man had gone, the matron said:
+
+"Few here pray to the same gods, and he whose worship my husband leads is
+not mine.  I, with several others, know that there is a Father in heaven
+who loves us men, his creatures, and guards us as his children.  You do
+not yet know him, and therefore you can not hope for anything from him;
+but if you will follow the advice of a friend, who was also once young,
+think in the future that your right hand is held firmly by the invisible,
+beloved hand of your mother.  Persuade yourself that she is by you, and
+take care that every word, yes, every glance, meets with her approval.
+Then she will be there, and will protect you whenever you require her
+aid."
+
+Melissa sank on the breast of her kind friend, embracing her as closely
+and kissing her as sincerely as if she had been the beloved mother to
+whose care Euryale had commended her,
+
+The counsels of this true friend agreed with those of her own heart, and
+so they must be right.  When at last they had to part, Euryale wished to
+send for one of the gentlemen of the court, whom she knew, that he might
+escort her through the troops of Caesar's attendants and friends who were
+waiting, and of the visitors and petitioners; but Melissa felt so happy
+and so well protected by Adventus, that she followed him without further
+delay.  In fact, the old man had a friendly feeling for her, since she
+had covered his feet so carefully the day before; she knew it by the tone
+of his voice and by the troubled look in his dim eyes.
+
+Even now she did not believe in the dangers at which her friends trembled
+for her, and she walked calmly across the lofty marble halls, the
+anteroom, and the other vast rooms of the imperial dwelling.  The
+attendants accompanied her respectfully from door to door, in obedience
+to the emperor's commands, and she went on with a firm step, looking
+straight in front of her, without noticing the inquisitive, approving,
+or scornful glances which were aimed at her.
+
+In the first rooms she needed an escort, for they were crowded with
+Romans and Alexandrians who were waiting for a sign from Caesar to appeal
+for his pardon or his verdict, or perhaps only wishing to see his
+countenance.  The emperor's "friends" sat at breakfast, of which
+Caracalla did not partake.  The generals, and the members of his court
+not immediately attached to his person, stood together in the various
+rooms, while the principal people of Alexandria--several senators and
+rich and important citizens of the town--as well as the envoys of the
+Egyptian provinces, in magnificent garments and rich gold ornaments, held
+aloof from the Romans, and waited in groups for the call of the usher.
+
+Melissa saw no one, nor did she observe the costly woven hangings on the
+walls, the friezes decorated with rare works of art and high reliefs, nor
+the mosaic floors over which she passed.  She did not notice the hum and
+murmur of the numerous voices which surrounded her; nor could she indeed
+have understood a single coherent sentence; for, excepting the ushers and
+the emperor's immediate attendants, at the reception-hour no one was
+allowed to raise his voice.  Expectancy and servility seemed here to
+stifle every lively impulse; and when, now and then, the loud call of
+one of the ushers rang above the murmur, one of those who were waiting
+spontaneously bowed low, or another started up, as if ready to obey any
+command.  The sensation, shared by many, of waiting in the vicinity of a
+high, almost godlike power, in whose hands lay their well-being or
+misery, gave rise to a sense of solemnity.  Every movement was subdued;
+anxious, nay, fearful expectation was written on many faces, and on
+others impatience and disappointment.  After a little while it was
+whispered from ear to ear that the emperor would only grant a few more
+audiences; and how many had already waited in vain yesterday, for hours,
+in the same place!
+
+Without delay Melissa went on till she had reached the heavy curtain
+which, as she already knew, shut off Caesar's inner apartments.
+
+The usher obligingly drew it back, even before she had mentioned her
+name, and while a deputation of the town senators, who had been received
+by Caracalla, passed out, she was followed by Alexandrian citizens, the
+chiefs of great merchant-houses, whose request for an audience he had
+sanctioned.  They were for the most part elderly men, and Melissa
+recognized among them Seleukus, Berenike's husband.
+
+Melissa bowed to him, but he did not notice her, and passed by without a
+word.  Perhaps he was considering the enormous sum to be expended on the
+show at night which he, with a few friends, intended to arrange at the
+circus in Caesar's honor.
+
+All was quite still in the large hall which separated the emperor's
+reception-room from the anteroom.  Melissa observed only two soldiers,
+who were looking out of window, and whose bodies were shaking as though
+they were convulsed with profound merriment.
+
+It happened that she had to wait here some time; for the usher begged her
+to have patience until the merchants' audience was over.  They were the
+last who would be received that day.  He invited her to rest on the couch
+on which was spread a bright giraffe's skin, but she preferred to walk up
+and down, for her heart was beating violently.  And while the usher
+vanished from the room, one of the warriors turned his head to look about
+him, and directly he caught sight of Melissa he gave his comrade a push,
+and said to him, loud enough for Melissa to hear:
+
+"A wonder!  Apollonaris, by Eros and all the Erotes, a precious wonder!"
+
+The next moment they both stepped back from the window and stared at the
+girl, who stood blushing and embarrassed, and gazed at the floor when she
+found with whom she had been left alone.
+
+They were two tribunes of the praetorians, but, notwithstanding their
+high grade, they were only young men of about twenty.  Twin brothers of
+the honorable house of the Aurelia, they had entered the army as
+centurions, but had soon been placed at the head of a thousand men, and
+appointed tribunes in Caesar's body-guard.  They resembled one another
+exactly; and this likeness, which procured them much amusement, they
+greatly enhanced by arranging their coal-black beards and hair in exactly
+the same way, and by dressing alike down to the rings on their fingers.
+One was called Apollonaris, the other Nemesianus Aurelius.  They were of
+the same height, and equally well grown, and no one could say which had
+the finest black eyes, which mouth the haughtiest smile, or to which of
+them the thick short beard and the artistically shaved spot between the
+under lip and chin was most becoming.  The beautifully embossed ornaments
+on their breast-plates and shirts of mail, and on the belt of the short
+sword, showed that they grudged no expense; in fact, they thought only of
+enjoyment, and it was merely for the honor of it that they were serving
+for a few years in the imperial guard.  By and by they would rest, after
+all the hardships of the campaign, in their palace at Rome, or in the
+villas on the various estates that they had inherited from their father
+and mother, and then, for a change, hold honorary positions in the public
+service.  Their friends knew that they also contemplated being married on
+the same day, when the game of war should be a thing of the past.
+
+In the mean time they desired nothing in the world but honor and
+pleasure; and such pleasure as well-bred, healthy, and genial youths,
+with amiability, strength, and money to spend, can always command, they
+enjoyed to the full, without carrying it to reckless extravagance.  Two
+merrier, happier, more popular comrades probably did not exist in the
+whole army.  They did their duty in the field bravely; during peace, and
+in a town like Alexandria, they appeared, on the contrary, like mere
+effeminate men of fashion.  At least, they spent a large part of their
+time in having their black hair crimped; they gave ridiculous sums to
+have it anointed with the most delicate perfumes; and it was difficult to
+imagine how effectively their carefully kept hands could draw a sword,
+and, if necessary, handle the hatchet or spade.
+
+To-day Nemesianus was in the emperor's anteroom by command, and
+Apollonaris, of his own freewill, had taken the place of another tribune,
+that he might bear his brother company.  They had caroused through half
+the night, and had begun the new day by a visit to the flower market,
+for love of the pretty saleswomen.  Each had a half-opened rose stuck in
+between his cuirass and shirt of mail on the left breast, plucked, as the
+charming Daphnion had assured them, from a bush which had been introduced
+from Persia only the year before.  The brothers, at any rate, had never
+seen any like them.
+
+While they were looking out of the window they had passed the time by
+examining every girl or woman who went by, intending to fling one rose at
+the first whose perfect beauty should claim it, and the other flower at
+the second; but during the half-hour none had appeared who was worthy of
+such a gift.  All the beauties in Alexandria were walking in the streets
+in the cool hour before sunset, and really there was no lack of handsome
+girls.  The brothers had even heard that Caesar, who seemed to have
+renounced the pleasures of love, had yielded to the charms of a lovely
+Greek.
+
+Directly they saw Melissa they were convinced that they had met the
+beautiful plaything of the imperial fancy, and each with the same action
+offered her his rose, as if moved by the same invisible power.
+
+Apollonaris, who had come into the world a little sooner than his
+brother, and who, by right of birth, had therefore a more audacious
+manner, stepped boldly up to Melissa and presented his, while Nemesianus
+at the same instant bowed to her, and begged her to give his the
+preference.
+
+Though their speeches were flattering and well-worded, Melissa repulsed
+them by remarking sharply that she did not want their flowers.
+
+"We can easily believe that," answered Apollonaris, "for are you not
+yourself a lovely, blooming rose?"
+
+"Vain flattery," replied Melissa; "and I certainly do not bloom for you."
+
+"That is both cruel and unjust," sighed Nemesianus, "for that which you
+refuse to us poor fellows you grant to another, who can obtain everything
+that other mortals yearn for."
+
+"But we," interrupted his brother, "are modest, nay, and pious warriors.
+We had intended offering up these roses to Aphrodite, but lo! the goddess
+has met us in person."
+
+"Her image at any rate," added the other.
+
+"And you should thank the foam-born goddess," continued Apollonaris; "for
+she has lent you, in spite of the danger of seeing herself eclipsed, her
+own divine charms.  Do you think she will be displeased if we withdraw
+the flowers and offer them to you?"
+
+"I think nothing," answered Melissa, "excepting that your honeyed
+remarks annoy me.  Do what you like with your roses, I will not accept
+them."
+
+"How dare you," asked Apollonaris, approaching her--"you, to whom the
+mother of love has given such wonderfully fresh lips--misuse them by
+refusing so sternly the humble petition of her faithful worshipers?  If
+you would not have Aphrodite enraged with you, hasten to atone for this
+transgression.  One kiss, my beauty, for her votary, and she will forgive
+you."
+
+Here Apollonaris stretched out his hand toward the girl to draw her to
+him, but she motioned him back indignantly, declaring that it would be
+reprehensible and cowardly in a soldier to use violence toward a modest
+maid.
+
+At this the two brothers laughed heartily, and Nemesianus exclaimed, "You
+do not belong to the Temple of Vesta, most lovely of roses, and yet you
+are well protected by such sharp thorns that it requires a great deal of
+courage to venture to attack you."
+
+"More," added Apollonaris, "than to storm a fortress.  But what camp or
+stronghold contains booty so well worth capturing?"
+
+Thereupon he threw his arm round Melissa and drew her to him.
+
+Neither he nor his brother had ever conducted themselves badly towards an
+honorable woman; and if Melissa had been but the daughter of a simple
+craftsman, her reproachful remarks would have sufficed to keep them at a
+distance.  But such immunity was not to be granted to the emperor's
+sweetheart, who could so audaciously reject two brothers accustomed to
+easy conquests; her demure severity could hardly be meant seriously.
+Apollonaris therefore took no notice of her violent resistance, but held
+her hands forcibly, and, though he could not succeed in kissing her for
+her struggling, he pressed his lips to her cheek, while she endeavored to
+free herself and pushed him off, breathless with real indignation.
+
+'Till now, the brothers had taken the matter as a joke; but when
+Apollonaris seized the girl again, and she, beside herself with fear,
+cried for help, he at once set her free.
+
+It was too late; for the curtains of the audience-room were already
+withdrawn, and Caracalla approached.  His countenance was red and
+distorted; he trembled with rage, and his angry glance fell like a flash
+of lightning on the luckless brothers.  Close by his side was the prefect
+Macrinus, who feared lest he should be attacked by a fresh fit; and
+Melissa shared his fears, as Caracalla cried to Apollonaris in an angry
+voice, "Scoundrel that you are, you shall repent of this!"
+
+Still, Aurelius had, by various wanton jokes, incurred the emperor's
+wrath before now, and he was accustomed to disarm it by some insinuating
+confession, so he answered him with a roguish smile, while raising his
+eyes to him humbly:
+
+"Forgive me, great Caesar!  Our poor strength, as you well know, is
+easily defeated in conflicts against overpowering beauty.  Dainties are
+sweet, not only for children.  Long ago Mars was drawn to Venus; and if
+I--"
+
+He had spoken these words in Latin, which Melissa did not understand;
+but the color left the emperor's face, and, pale with excitement, he
+stammered out laboriously:
+
+"You have--you have dared--"
+
+"For  this  rose," began  the youth again,  "I begged a hasty kiss from
+the beauty, which certainly blooms for all, and she--"  He raised his
+hands and eyes imploringly to the despot; but Caracalla had already
+snatched Macrinus's sword from its sheath, and before Aurelius could
+defend himself he was struck first on the head with the flat of the
+blade, and then received a series of sharp cuts on his brow and face.
+
+Streaming with blood from the gaping wounds which the victim, trembling
+with fear and rage, covered with his hands, he surrendered himself to the
+care of his startled brother, while Caesar overwhelmed them both with a
+flood of furious reproaches.
+
+When Nemesianus began to bind up his wounded brother's head with a
+handkerchief handed to him by Melissa, and Caracalla saw the gaping
+wounds he had inflicted, he became quieter, and said:
+
+"I think those lips will not try to steal kisses again for some time from
+honorable maidens.  You and Nemesianus have forfeited your lives; how
+ever, the beseeching look of those all-powerful eves has saved you--you
+are spared.  Take your brother away, Nemesianus.  You are not to leave
+your quarters until further orders."
+
+With this he turned his back on the twins, but on the threshold he again
+addressed them and said:
+
+"You were mistaken about this maiden.  She is not less pure and noble
+than your own sister."
+
+The merchants were dismissed from the tablinum more hastily than was due
+to the importance of their business, in which, until this interruption,
+the sovereign had shown a sympathetic interest and intelligence which
+surprised them; and they left Caesar's presence disappointed, but with
+the promise that they should be received again in the evening.
+
+As soon as they had retired, Caracalla threw himself again on the couch.
+
+The bath had done him good.  Still somewhat exhausted, though his head
+was clear, he would not be hindered from receiving the deputation for
+which he had important matters to decide; but this fresh attack of rage
+revenged itself by a painful headache.  Pale, and with slightly quivering
+limbs, he dismissed the prefect and his other friends, and desired
+Epagathos to call Melissa.
+
+He needed rest, and again the girl's little hand, which had yesterday
+done him good, proved its healing power.  The throbbing in his head
+yielded to her gentle touch, and by degrees exhaustion gave way to the
+comfortable languor of convalesence.
+
+To-day, as yesterday, he expressed his thanks to Melissa, but he found
+her changed.  She looked timidly and anxiously down into her lap
+excepting when she replied to a direct question; and yet he had done
+everything to please her.  Her relations would soon be free and in
+Alexandria once more, and Zminis was in prison, chained hand and foot.
+This he told her; and, though she was glad, it was not enough to restore
+the calm cheerfulness he had loved to see in her.
+
+He urged her, with warm insistence, to tell him what it was that weighed
+on her, and at last, with eyes full of tears, she forced herself to say:
+
+"You yourself have seen what they take me for."
+
+"And you have seen," he quickly replied, "how I punish those who forget
+the respect they owe to you."
+
+"But you are so dreadful in your wrath!"  The words broke from her lips.
+"Where others blame, you can destroy; and you do it, too, when passion
+carries you away.  I am bound to obey your call, and here I am.  But I
+fancy myself like the little dog--you may see him any day--which in the
+beast-garden of the Panaeum, shares a cage with a royal tiger.  The huge
+brute puts up with a great deal from his small companion, but woe betide
+the dog if the tiger once pats him with his heavy, murderous paw--and he
+might, out of sheer forgetfulness!"
+
+"But this hand," Caesar broke in, raising his delicate hand covered with
+rings, "will never forget, any more than my heart, how much it owes to
+you."
+
+"Until I, in some unforeseen way--perhaps quite unconsciously--excite
+your anger," sighed Melissa.  "Then you will be carried away by passion,
+and I shall share the common fate."
+
+Caracalla was about to reply indignantly, but just then Adventus entered
+the room, announcing the chief astrologer of the Temple of Serapis.
+Caracalla refused to receive him just then, but he anxiously asked
+whether he had any signs to report.  The reply was in the affirmative,
+and in a few minutes Caesar had in his hand a wax tablet covered with
+words and figures.  He studied it eagerly, and his countenance cleared;
+still holding the tablets, he exclaimed to Melissa:
+
+"You, daughter of Heron, have nothing to fear from me, you of all the
+world!  In some quiet hour I will explain to you how my planet yearns to
+yours, and yours--that is, yourself--to mine.  The gods have created us
+for each other, child; I am already under your influence, but your heart
+still hesitates, and I know why; it is because you distrust me."
+
+Melissa raised her large eyes to his face in astonishment, and he went
+on, pensively:
+
+"The past must stand; it is like a scar which no water will wash out.
+What have you not heard of my past?  What did they feel, in their self-
+conscious virtue, when they talked of my crimes?  Did it ever occur to
+any one, I wonder, that with the purple I assumed the sword, to protect
+my empire and throne?  And when  I have used the blade, how eagerly have
+fingers pointed at me, how gladly slanderous tongues have wagged!  Who
+has ever thought of asking what compulsion led me to shed blood, or how
+much it cost me to do it?  You, fair child--and the stars confirm it--you
+were sent by fate to share the burden that oppresses me, and to you I
+will ease my heart, to you I will confide all, unasked, because my heart
+prompts me to do so.  But first you must tell me with what tales they
+taught you to hate the man to whom, as you yourself confessed, you
+nevertheless felt drawn."
+
+At this Melissa raised her hands in entreaty and remonstrance, and Caesar
+went on:
+
+"I will spare you the pains.  They say that I am ever athirst for fresh
+bloodshed if only some one is rash enough to suggest it to me.  You were
+told that Caesar murdered his brother Geta, with many more who did but
+speak his victim's name.  My father-in-law, and his daughter Plautilla,
+my wife, were, it is said, the victims of my fury.  I killed Papinian,
+the lawyer and prefect, and Cilo--whom you saw yesterday--nearly shared
+the same fate.  What did they conceal?  Nothing.  Your nod confesses it--
+well, and why should they, since speaking ill of others is their greatest
+delight?  It is all true, and I should never think of denying it.  But
+did it ever occur to you, or did any one ever suggest to you, to inquire
+how it came to pass that I perpetrated such horrors; I--who was brought
+up in the fear of the gods and the law, like you and other people?"
+
+"No, my lord, never," replied Melissa, in distress.  "But I beg you, I
+beseech you, say no more about such dreadful things.  I know full well
+that you are not wicked; that you are much better than people think."
+
+"And for that very reason," cried Caesar, whose cheeks were flushed with
+pleasure in the hard task he had set himself, "you must hear me.  I am
+Caesar.  There is no judge over me; I need give account to none for my
+actions.  Nor do I.  Who, besides yourself, is more to me than the flies
+on that cup?"
+
+"And your conscience?" she timidly put in.
+
+"It raises hideous questions from time to time," he replied, gloomily.
+"It can be obtrusive, but we can teach ourselves not to answer--besides,
+what you call conscience knows the motives for every action, and,
+remembering them, judges leniently.  You, child, should do the same; for
+you--"
+
+"O my lord, what can my poor judgment matter?"  Melissa panted out; but
+Caracalla exclaimed, as if the question pained him:
+
+"Must I explain all that?  The stars, as you know, proclaim to you, as to
+me, that a higher power has joined us as light and warmth are joined.
+Have you forgotten how we both felt only yesterday?  Or am I mistaken?
+Has not Roxana's soul entered into that divinely lovely form because it
+longed for its lost companion spirit?"
+
+He spoke vehemently, with a quivering of his eyelids; but feeling her
+hand tremble in his own, he collected himself, and went on in a lower
+tone, but with urgent emphasis:
+
+"I will let you glance into this bosom, closed to every other eye; for
+my desolate heart is inspired by you to fresh energy and life; I am as
+grateful to you as a drowning man to his deliverer.  I shall suffocate
+and die if I repress the impulse to open my heart to you!"
+
+What change was this that had come over this mysterious being?  Melissa
+felt as though she was gazing on the face of a stranger, for, though his
+eyelids still quivered, his eyes were bright with ecstatic fire and his
+features looked more youthful.  On that noble brow the laurel wreath he
+wore looked well.  Also, as she now observed, he was magnificently
+attired; he wore a close-fitting tunic, or breast-plate made of thick
+woolen stuff, and over it a purple mantle, while from his bare throat
+hung a precious medallion, shield-shaped, and set in gold and gems, the
+center formed by a large head of Medusa, with beautiful though terrible
+features.  The lion-heads of gold attached to each corner of the short
+cloak he wore over the sham coat of mail, were exquisite works of art,
+and sandals embroidered with gold and gems covered his feet and ankles.
+He was dressed to-day like the heir of a lordly house, anxious to charm;
+nay, indeed, like an emperor, as he was; and with what care had his body-
+slave arranged his thin curls!
+
+He passed his hand over his brow and cast a glance at a silver mirror on
+the low table at the head of his couch.  When he turned to her again his
+amorous eyes met Melissa's.
+
+She looked down in startled alarm.  Was it for her sake that Caesar had
+thus decked himself and looked in the mirror?  It seemed scarcely
+possible, and yet it flattered and pleased her.  But in the next instant
+she longed more fervently than she ever had before for a magic charm
+by which she might vanish and be borne far, far away from this
+dreadful man.  In fancy she saw the vessel which the lady Berenike had in
+readiness.  She would, she must fly hence, even if it should part her for
+a time from Diodoros.
+
+Did Caracalla read her thought?  Nay, he could not see through her; so
+she endured his gaze, tempting him to speak; and his heart beat high with
+hope as he fancied he saw that she was beginning to be affected by his
+intense agitation.  At this moment he felt convinced, as he often had
+been, that the most atrocious of his crimes had been necessary and
+inevitable.  There was something grand and vast in his deeds of blood,
+and that--for he flattered himself he knew the female heart--must win
+her admiration, besides the awe and love she already felt.
+
+During the night, at his waking, and in his bath, he had felt that she
+was as necessary to him as the breath of life and hope.  What he
+experienced was love as the poets had sung it.  How often had he laughed
+it to scorn, and boasted that he was armed against the arrows of Eros!
+Now, for the first time, he was aware of the anxious rapture, the ardent
+longing of which he had read in so many songs.  There stood the object of
+his passion.  She must hear him, must be his--not by compulsion, not by
+imperial command, but of the free impulse of her heart.
+
+His confession would help to this end.
+
+With a swift gesture, as if to throw off the last trace of fatigue,
+he sat up and began in a firm voice, with a light in his eyes:
+
+"Yes, I killed my brother Geta.  You shudder.  And yet, if at this day,
+when I know all the results of the deed, the state of affairs were the
+same as then, I would do it again!  That shocks you.  But only listen,
+and then you will say with me that it was Fate which compelled me to act
+so, and not otherwise."
+
+He paused, and then mistaking the anxiety which was visible in Melissa's
+face for sympathetic attention, he began his story, confident of her
+interest:
+
+"When I was born, my father had not yet assumed the purple, but he
+already aimed at the sovereignty.  Augury had promised it to him; my
+mother knew this, and shared his ambition.  While I was still at my
+nurse's breast he was made consul; four years later he seized the throne.
+Pertinax was killed, the wretched Didius Julianus bought the empire, and
+this brought my father to Rome from Pannonia.  Meanwhile he had sent us
+children, my brother Geta and me, away from the city; nor was it till he
+had quelled the last resistance on the Tiber that he recalled us.
+
+"I was then but a child of five, and yet one day of that time I remember
+vividly.  My father was going through Rome in solemn procession.  His
+first object was to do due honor to the corpse of Pertinax.  Rich
+hangings floated from every window and balcony in the city.  Garlands of
+flowers and laurel wreaths adorned the houses, and pleasant odors were
+wafted to us as we went.  The jubilation of the people was mixed with the
+trumpet-call of the soldiers; handkerchiefs were waved and acclamations
+rang out.  This was in honor of my father, and of me also, the future
+Caesar.  My little heart was almost bursting with pride; it seemed to me
+that I had grown several heads taller, not only than other boys, but than
+the people that surrounded me.
+
+"When the funeral procession began, my mother wished me to go with her
+into the arcade where seats had been placed for the ladies to view, but
+I refused to follow her.  My father became angry.  But when he heard me
+declare that I was a man and the future Emperor, that I would rather see
+nothing than show myself to the people among the women, he smiled.  He
+ordered Cilo, who was then the prefect of Rome, to lead me to the seats
+of the past consuls and the old senators.  I was delighted at this; but
+when he allowed my younger brother Geta to follow me, my pleasure was
+entirely spoiled."
+
+"And you were then five years old?"  asked Melissa, astonished.
+
+"That surprises you!" smiled Caracalla.  "But I had already traveled
+through half the empire, and had experienced more than other boys of
+twice my age.  I was, at any rate, still child enough to forget
+everything else in the brilliant spectacle that unfolded before my eyes.
+I remember to this day the colored wax statue which represented Pertinax
+so exactly that it might have been himself risen from the grave.  And the
+procession!  It seemed to have no end; one new thing followed another.
+All walked past in mourning robes, even the choir of singing boys and
+men.  Cilo explained to me who had made the statues of the Romans who had
+served their country, who the artists and scholars were, whose statues
+and busts were carried by.  Then came bronze groups of the people of
+every nation in the empire, in their costumes.  Cilo told me what they
+were called, and where they lived; he then added that one day they would
+all belong to me; that I must learn the art of fighting, in case they
+resisted me, and should require suppressing.  Also, when they carried the
+flags of the guilds past, when the horse and foot soldiers, the race-
+horses from the circus and several other things came by, he continued to
+explain them.  I only remember it now because it made me so happy.  The
+old man spoke to me alone; he regarded me alone as the future sovereign.
+He left Geta to eat the sweets which his aunts had given him, and when I
+too wanted some my brother refused to let me have any.  Then Cilo stroked
+my hair, and said: 'leave him his toys.  When you are a man you shall
+have the whole Roman Empire for your own, and all the nations I told you
+of.'  Geta meanwhile had thought better of it, and pushed some of the
+sweetmeats toward me.  I would not have them, and, when he tried to make
+me take them, I threw them into the road."
+
+"And you remember all that?" said Melissa.
+
+"More things than these are indelibly stamped on my mind from that day,"
+said Caesar.  "I can see before me now the pile on which Pertinax was to
+be burned.  It was splendidly decorated, and on the top stood the gilt
+chariot in which he had loved to ride.  Before the consuls fired the logs
+of Indian wood, my father led us to the image of Pertinax, that we might
+kiss it.  He held me by the hand.  Wherever we went, the senate and
+people hailed us with acclamations.  My mother carried Geta in her arms.
+This delighted the populace.  They shouted for her and my brother as
+enthusiastically as for us, and I recollect to this day how that went to
+my heart.  He might have the sweets and welcome, but what the people had
+to offer was due only to my father and me, not to my brother.  At that
+moment I first fully understood that Severus was the present and I the
+future Caesar.  Geta had only to obey, like every one else.
+
+"After kissing the image, I stood, still holding my father's hand, to
+watch the flames.  I can see them now, crackling and writhing as they
+gained on the wood, licking it and fawning, as it were, till it caught
+and sent up a rush of sparks and fire.  At last the whole pile was one
+huge blaze.  Then, suddenly, out of the heart of the flames an eagle
+rose.  The creature flapped its broad wings in the air, which was golden
+with sunshine and quivering with heat, soaring above the smoke and fire,
+this way and that.  But it soon took flight, away from the furnace
+beneath.  I shouted with delight, and cried to my father: 'Look at the
+bird!  Where is he flying?'  And he eagerly answered: 'Well done!
+If you desire to preserve the power I have conquered for you always
+undiminished, you must keep your eyes open.  Let no sign pass unnoticed,
+no opportunity neglected.'
+
+"He himself acted on this rule.  To him obstacles existed only to be
+removed, and he taught me, too, to give myself neither peace nor rest,
+and not to spare the life of a foe.--That festival secured my father the
+suffrages of the Romans.  Meanwhile Pescennius Niger rose up in the East
+with a large army and took the field against Severus.  But my father was
+not the man to hesitate.  Within a few months of the obsequies of
+Pertinax his opponent was a headless corpse.
+
+"There was yet another obstacle to be removed.  You have heard of Clodius
+Albinus.  My father had adopted him and raised him to share his throne.
+But Severus could not divide the rule with any man.
+
+"When I was nine years old I saw, after the battle of Lugdunum, the dead
+face of Albinus's head; it was set up in front of the Curia on a lance.
+
+"I now was the second personage in the empire, next to my father; the
+first among the youth of the whole world, and the future emperor.  When
+I was eleven the soldiers hailed me as Augustus; that was in the war
+against the Parthians, before Ktesiphon.  But they did the same to Geta.
+This was like wormwood in the sweet draught; and if then--But what can
+a girl care about the state, and the fate of rulers and nations?"
+
+"Yes, go on," said Melissa.  "I see already what you are coming to.  You
+disliked the idea of sharing your power with another."
+
+"Nay," cried Caracalla, vehemently, "I not only disliked it, it was
+intolerable, impossible!  What I want you to see is that I did not grudge
+my brother his share of my father's inheritance, like any petty trader.
+The world--that is the point--the world itself was too small for two of
+us.  It was not I, but Fate, which had doomed Geta to die.  I am certain
+of this, and so must you be.  Yes, it was Fate.  Fate prompted the
+child's little hand to attempt its brother's life.  And that was long
+before my brain could form a thought or my baby-lips could stammer his
+hated name."
+
+"Then you tried to kill your brother even in infancy?" asked Melissa, and
+her large eyes dilated with horror as she gazed at the terrible narrator.
+But Caracalla went on, in an apologetic tone:
+
+"I was then but two years old.  It was at Mediolanum, soon after Geta's
+birth.  An egg was found in the court of the palace; a hen had laid it
+close to a pillar.  It was of a purple hue-red all over like the imperial
+mantle, and this indicated that the newly born infant was destined to
+sovereignty.  Great was the rejoicing.  The purple marvel was shown even
+to me who could but just walk.  I, like a naughty boy, flung it down; the
+shell cracked, and the contents poured out on the pavement.  My mother
+saw it, and her exclamation, 'Wicked child, you have murdered your
+brother!' was often repeated to me in after-years.  It never struck me as
+particularly motherly."
+
+Here he paused, gazing meditatively into vacancy, and then asked the
+girl, who had listened intently:
+
+"Were you never haunted by a word so that you could not be rid of it?"
+
+"Oh, yes," cried Melissa; "a striking rhythm in a song, or a line of
+poetry--"
+
+Caracalla nodded agreement, and went on more vehemently: "That is what I
+experienced at the words, 'You have murdered your brother!'  I not only
+heard them now and then with my inward ear, but incessantly, like the
+dreary hum of the flies in my camp-tent, for hours at a time, by day and
+by night.  No fanning could drive these away.  The diabolical voice
+whispered loudest when Geta had done anything to vex me; or if things had
+been given him which I did not wish him to have.  And how often that
+happened!  For I--I was only Bassianus to my mother; but her youngest was
+her dear little Geta.
+
+"So the years passed.  We had, while still quite young, our own teams in
+the circus.  One day, when we were driving for a wager-we were still
+boys, and I was ahead of the other lads--the horses of my chariot shied
+to one side.  I was thrown some distance on the course.  Geta saw this.
+He turned his horses to the right where I lay.  He drove over his brother
+as he would over straw and apple-parings in the dust; and his wheel broke
+my thigh.  Who knows what else it crushed in me?  One thing is certain--
+from that date the most painful of my sufferings originated.  And he, the
+mean scoundrel, had done it intentionally.  He had sharp eyes.  He knew
+how to guide his steeds.  He had never driven his wheel over a hazel-nut
+in the sand of the arena against his will; and I was lying some distance
+from the driving course."
+
+Caesar's eyelids blinked spasmodically as he uttered this accusation, and
+his very glance revealed the raging fire that was burning in his soul.
+Melissa's sad cry of:
+
+"What terrible suspicion!" he answered with a short, scornful laugh and
+the furious assertion:
+
+"Oh, there were friends enough who informed me what hope Geta had founded
+on this act of treachery.  The disappointment made him irritable and
+listless, when Galenus had succeeded in curing me so far that I was able
+to throw away my Crutch; and my limp--at least so they tell me--is hardly
+perceptible."
+
+"Not at all, most certainly not at all," Melissa sympathetically assured
+him.  He, however, went on:
+
+"Yet what I endured meanwhile!--and while I passed so many long weeks of
+pain and impatience on a couch, the words my mother had said about the
+brother whom I murdered rang constantly in my ears as though a reciter
+were engaged by day and night to reiterate them.
+
+"But even this passed away.  With the pain, which had spoiled many good
+hours for me, the quiet had brought me something more to the purpose-
+thoughts and plans.  Yes, during those peaceful weeks the things my
+father and tutor had taught me became clear and real for the first time.
+I realized that I must become energetic if I meant ever to be a thorough
+sovereign.  As soon as I could use my foot again I became an industrious
+and docile pupil under Cilo.  From a child up to the time of this cruel
+experience, my youthful heart had clung to my nurse.  She was a Christian
+from my father's African home--I knew she loved me best on earth.  My
+mother knew of no higher destiny than that of being the Domna,--[Domna,
+lady or mistress, in corrupt Latin.  Hence her name of Julia Domna] the
+lady of the soldiers, the mother of the camp, and the lady philosopher
+among the sages.  What she gave me in the way of love was but copper
+alms.  She threw golden solidi of love into Geta's lap in lavish
+abundance.  And her sister and her nieces, who often lived with us,
+treated me exactly as she did.  They were distantly civil, or they
+shunned me; but my brother was their spoiled plaything.  I was as
+incapable as Geta was master of the art of stealing hearts; but in my
+childhood I needed none of them: for, if I wished for a kind word,
+a sweet kiss, or the love of a woman, my nurse's arms were open to me.
+Nor was she an ordinary woman.  As the widow of a tribune who had fallen
+in my father's service, she had undertaken to attend on me.  She loved me
+as no one else ever did.  She was also the only person whom I would
+willingly obey.  I came into the world full of wild instincts, but she
+knew how to tame them kindly.  My aversion to my brother was the one
+thing she checked but feebly, for he was a thorn in her side too.  I
+learned this when she, who was so gentle, explained to me, with asperity
+in her tone, that there was but one God in heaven, and on earth but one
+emperor, who should govern the world in his name.  She also imparted
+these convictions to others, and this turned to her disadvantage.  My
+mother parted us, and sent her back to her African home.  She died soon
+after."  He was silent, and gazed pensively into vacancy; soon, however,
+he collected his thoughts and said, lightly:
+
+"Well, I became Cilo's diligent pupil."
+
+"But," asked Melissa, "did you not say that at one time you attempted his
+life?"
+
+"I did so," replied Caracalla darkly;  "for a moment arrived when I
+cursed his teaching, and yet it was certainly wise and well meant.  You
+see, child, all of you who go through life humbly and without power are
+trained to submit obediently to the will of Heaven.  Cilo taught me to
+place my own power, and the greatness of the realm which it would be
+incumbent on me to reign over, above everything, even above the gods.
+It was impressed upon you and yours to hold the life of another sacred;
+to us, our duty as the sovereign transcends this law.  Even the blood of
+a brother must flow if it is for the good of the state intrusted to us.
+My nurse had taught me that being good meant doing unto others as we
+would be done by; Cilo cried to me: 'Strike down, that you may not be
+struck down--away with mercy, if the welfare of the state is threatened!'
+And how many hands are raised against Rome, the universal empire, which I
+rule over!  It needs a strong hand to keep its antagonistic parts
+together.  Otherwise it would fall apart like a bundle of arrows when the
+string that bound them is broken.  And I, even as a boy, had sworn to my
+father, by the Terminus stone in the Capitol, never to abandon a single
+inch of his ground without fighting for it.  He, Severus, was the wisest
+of the rulers.  Only the blind love for his second son, encouraged by the
+women, caused him to forget his moderation and prudence.  My brother Geta
+was to reign together with me over the empire, which ought to have been
+mine alone as the first-born.  Every year festivals were kept, with
+prayers and sacrifices, to the "love of the brothers."  You have perhaps
+seen the coins, which show us hand in hand, and have on them the
+inscription, 'Eternal union'!
+
+"I in union--I hand in hand with the man I most hated under the sun!
+It almost maddened me only to hear his voice.  I would have liked best
+of all to spring at his throat when I saw him with his learned fellows
+squandering their time.  Do you know what they did?  They invented the
+names by which the voices of different animals were to be known.  Once I
+snatched the pencil out of the hand of the freedman as he was writing the
+sentences, 'The horse neighs, the pig grunts, the goat bleats, the cow
+lows, the sheep baas.'  'He, himself,' I added, 'croaks like a hoarse
+jay.'
+
+"That I should share the government with this miserable, faint-hearted,
+poisonous nobody could never be,--this enemy, who, when I said 'Yes,'
+cried 'No!'  Who frustrated all my measures,--it was impossible!  It
+would have caused the destruction of the state, as certainly as it was
+the unfairest and unwisest of the deeds of Severus, to place the younger
+brother as co-regent with the first-born, the rightful heir to the
+throne.  I, whom my father had taught to watch for signs, was reminded
+every hour that this unbearable position must come to an end.
+
+"After the death of Severus, we lived at first close to one another in
+separate parts of the same palace like two lions in a cage across which a
+partition has been erected, so that they may not reciprocally mangle each
+other.
+
+"We used to meet at my mother's.
+
+"That morning my mastiff had bitten Geta's wolfhound and killed him,
+and they had found a black liver in the beast he had sent for sacrifice.
+I had been informed of this.  Destiny was on my side.  This indolent
+inactivity must be brought to a close.  I myself do not know how I felt
+as I mounted the steps to my mother's rooms.  I only remember distinctly
+that a demon cried continually in my ear, 'You have murdered your
+brother!'  Then I suddenly found myself face to face with him.  It was
+in the empress's reception-room.  And when I saw the hated flat-shaped
+head so close to me, when his beardless mouth with its thick underlip
+smiled at me so sweetly and at the same time so falsely, I felt as if I
+again heard the cry with which he had cheered on his horse.  And I felt
+ .  .  .  I even felt the pain-as if he broke my thigh again with his
+wheel.  And at the same time a fiend whispered in my ear: 'Destroy him,
+or he will kill you, and through him Rome will perish!'
+
+"Then I seized my sword.  In his odious, peevish voice he said something
+--I forget what nonsense--to me.  Then it appeared to me as if all the
+sheep and goats over which he had squandered his time were bleating at
+me.  The blood rushed to my head.  The room spun round me in a circle.
+Black spots on a red ground danced before my eyes.
+
+"And then--What flashed in my right hand was my own naked sword!  I
+neither heard nor said anything further.  Nor had I planned, nor ever
+thought of, what then occurred.  .  .  .  But suddenly I felt as if a
+mountain of oppressive lead had fallen from my breast.  How easily I
+could breathe again!  All that had just before turned round me in a mad,
+whirling dance stood still.  The sun shone brightly in the large room; a
+shaft of light, showing dancing dust, fell on Geta.  He sank on his knees
+close to me, with my sword in his breast.  My mother made a fruitless
+effort to shield him.  His blood trickled over her hand.  I can still see
+every ring on those slender, white fingers.  I also remember distinctly
+how, when I raised my sword against him, my mother rushed in between us
+to protect her favorite.  The sharp blade, as she tried to seize it,
+accidentally grazed her hand--I know not how--only the skin was slightly
+cut.  Yet what a scream she gave over the wound which the son had given
+his mother!  Julia Maesa, her daughter Mammara, and the other women,
+rushed in.  How they exaggerated!  They made a river out of every drop of
+blood.
+
+"So the dreadful deed was done; and yet, had I let the wretch live, I
+should have been a traitor to Rome, to myself, and to my father's life's
+work.  That day, for the first time, I was ruler of the world.  Those who
+accuse me of fratricide no doubt believe themselves to be right.  But
+they certainly are not.  I know better.  You also know now with me that
+destiny, and not I, struck Geta out from among the living."
+
+Here he sat for some time in breathless silence.  Then he asked Melissa:
+
+"You understand now how I came to shed my brother's blood?"
+
+She started, and repeated gently after him: "Yes, I understand it."
+
+Deep compassion filled her heart, and yet she felt she dare not sanction
+what she had heard and deplored.  Torn by deep and conflicting feelings
+she threw back her head, brushed her hair off her face, and cried: "Let
+me go now; I can bear it no longer!"
+
+"So soft-hearted?"  asked he, and shook his head disapprovingly.  "Life
+rages more wildly round the throne than in an artist's home.  You will
+have to learn to swim through the roaring torrent with me.  Believe me,
+even enormities can become quite commonplace.  And, besides, why does it
+still shock you when you yourself know that it was indispensable?"
+
+"I am only a weak girl, and I feel as if I had witnessed these fearful
+deeds, and had to bear the terrible blood-guiltiness with you!" broke
+from her lips.
+
+"That is what you must and shall do!  It is to that end that I have
+confided to you what no one else has ever heard from my mouth!" cried
+Caracalla, his eyes flashing more brightly.  She felt as though this cry
+called her from her slumbers and revealed the precipice to which she had
+strayed in her sleepwalking.
+
+When Caracalla had begun telling her of his youth, she had only listened
+with half an ear; for she could not forget Berenike's rescuing ship.  But
+soon his confessions completely attracted her attention, and the lament
+of this powerful man on whom so many injuries and wrongs had fallen, who
+even in childhood had been deprived of the happiness of a mother's love,
+had touched her tender heart.  That which was afterward told to her she
+had identified with her own humble life; she heard with a shudder that it
+was to the malice of his brother that this unhappy being owed the injury
+which, like a poisonous blight, had marred for him all the joys of
+existence, while she owed all that was loveliest and best in her
+young life to a brother's love.
+
+The grounds on which Caracalla had based the assertion that destiny had
+compelled him to murder Geta appeared to her young and inexperienced mind
+as indisputable.  He was only the pitiable victim of his birth and of a
+cruel fate.  Besides, the humblest and most sober-minded can not resist
+the charm of majesty; and this hapless man, who had honored Melissa with
+his confidence, and who had assured her so earnestly that she was of such
+importance to him and could do so much for him, was the ruler of the
+universe.
+
+She had also felt, after Caesar's confession, that she had a right to be
+proud, since he had thought her worthy to take an interest in the tragedy
+in the imperial palace, as if she had been a member of the court.  In her
+lively imagination she had witnessed the ghastly act to which he--as she
+had certainly believed, even when she had replied to his question--had
+been forced by fate.
+
+But the demand which had followed her answer now recurred to her.  The
+picture of Diodoros, which had completely vanished from her thoughts
+while she had been listening, suddenly appeared to her, and, as she
+fancied, he looked at her reproachfully.
+
+Had she, then, transgressed against her betrothed?
+
+No, no, indeed she had not!
+
+She loved him, and only him; and for that very reason, her upright
+judgment told her now, that it would be sinning against her lover to
+carry out Caracalla's wish, as if she had become his fellow-culprit,
+or certainly the advocate of the bloody outrage.  She could think of no
+answer to his "That is what you must and shall do!" that would not awaken
+his wrath.  Cautiously, and with sincere thanks for his confidence in
+her, she begged him once more to allow her to leave him, because she
+needed rest after such a shock to her mind.  And it would also do him
+good to grant himself a short rest.  But he assured her he knew that he
+could only rest when he had fulfilled his duty as a sovereign.  His
+father had said, a few minutes before he drew his last breath:
+
+"If there is anything more to be done, give it me to do," and he, the
+son, would do likewise.
+
+"Moreover," he concluded, "it has done me good to bring to light that
+which I had for so long kept sealed within me.  To gaze in your face at
+the same time was, perhaps, even better physic."
+
+At this he rose and, seizing the startled girl by both hands, he cried:
+
+"You, child, can satisfy the insatiable!  The love which I offer you
+resembles a full bunch of grapes, and yet I am quite content if you will
+give me back but one berry."
+
+At the very commencement, this declaration was drowned by a loud shout
+which rang through the room in waves of sound.
+
+Caracalla started, but, before he could reach the window, old Adventus
+rushed in breathless; and he was followed, though in a more dignified
+manner, with a not less hasty step and every sign of excitement, by
+Macrinus, the prefect of the praetorians, with his handsome young son and
+a few of Caesar's friends.
+
+"This is how I rest!" exclaimed Caracalla, bitterly, as he released
+Melissa's hand and turned inquiringly to the intruders.
+
+The news had spread among the praetorians and the Macedonian legions,
+that the emperor, who, contrary to his custom, had not shown himself for
+two days, was seriously ill, and at the point of death.  Feeling
+extremely anxious about one who had showered gold on them, and given them
+such a degree of freedom as no other imperator had ever allowed them,
+they had collected before the Serapeum and demanded to see Caesar.
+Caracalla's eyes lighted up at this information, and, excitedly pleased,
+he cried:
+
+"They only are really faithful!"
+
+He asked for his sword and helmet, and sent for the 'paludamentum',
+the general's cloak of purple, embroidered with gold, which he never
+otherwise wore except on the field.  The soldiers should see that he
+intended leading in future battles.
+
+While they waited, he conversed quietly with Macrinus and the others;
+when, however, the costly garment covered his shoulders, and when his
+favorite, Theocritus, who had known best how to support him during his
+illness, offered him an arm, he answered imperiously that he required no
+assistance.
+
+"Nevertheless, you should, after so serious an attack--" the physician in
+ordinary ventured to exhort him; but he interrupted him scornfully, and,
+glancing toward Melissa, exclaimed:
+
+"Those little hands there contain more healing power than yours and the
+great Galenus's put together."
+
+Thereupon he beckoned to the young girl, and when she once more besought
+his permission to go, he left the room with the commanding cry, "You are
+to wait!"
+
+He had rather far to go and some steps to mount in order to reach the
+balcony which ran round the base of the cupola of the Pantheon which his
+father had joined to the Serapeum, yet he undertook this willingly, as
+thence he could best be seen and heard.
+
+A few hours earlier it would have been impossible for him to reach this
+point, and Epagathos had arranged that a sedan-chair and strong bearers
+should be waiting at the foot of the steps; but he refused it, for he
+felt entirely restored, and the shouts of his warriors intoxicated him
+like sparkling wine.
+
+Meanwhile Melissa remained behind in the audience-chamber.  She must obey
+Caesar's command.  Yet it frightened her; and, besides, she was woman
+enough to feel it as an offense that the man who had assured her so
+sincerely of his gratitude, and who even feigned to love her, should have
+refused so harshly her desire to rest.  She foresaw that, as long as he
+remained in Alexandria, she would have to be his constant companion.  She
+trembled at the idea; yet, if she tried to fly from him, all she loved
+would be lost.  No, this must not be thought of!  She must remain.
+
+She threw herself on a divan, lost in thought, and as she realized the
+confidence of which the unapproachable, proud emperor had thought her
+worthy, a secret voice whispered to her that it was certainly a
+delightful thing to share the overwhelming agitations of the highest
+and greatest.  And was he then really bad, he who felt the necessity of
+vindicating himself before a simple girl, and to whom it appeared so
+intolerable to be misjudged and condemned even by her?  Besides being
+the emperor and a suffering man, Caracalla had also become her wooer.
+It never once entered her mind to accept him; but still it flattered
+her extremely that the greatest of men should declare his love for her.
+Why, then, need she fear him?  She was so important to him, she could do
+so much for him, that he would surely take care not to insult or offend
+her.  This modest child, who till quite lately had trembled before her
+own father's temper, now, in the consciousness of Caesar's favor, felt
+herself strong to triumph over the wrath and passions of the most
+powerful and most terrible of men.  In the mean time she dared not risk
+confessing to him that she was another's bride, for that might determine
+him to let Diodoros feel his power.  The thought that the emperor could
+care about her good opinion greatly pleased her; it even had the effect
+of raising the hope in her inexperienced mind that Caracalla would
+moderate his passion for her sake--when old Adventus came into the room.
+
+He was in a hurry; for preparations had to be made in the dining-hall
+for the reception of the ambassadors.  But when at his appearance Melissa
+rose from the divan he begged her good-naturedly to continue resting.
+No one could tell what humor Caracalla might be in when he returned.
+She had often seen how rapidly that chameleon could change color.
+Who that had seen him just now, going to meet his soldiers, would believe
+that he had a few hours before sent away, with hard words, the widow of
+the Egyptian governor, who had come to beg mercy for her husband?
+
+"So that wretch, Theocritus, has really carried out his intention of
+ruining the honest Titianus?" asked Melissa, horrified.
+
+"Not only of ruining him," answered the chamberlain; "Titianus is by this
+time beheaded."
+
+The old man bowed and left the room; but Melissa remained behind, feeling
+as if the floor had opened in front of her.  He, whose ardent assurance
+she had just now believed, that he had been forced to shed the blood of
+an impious wretch, in obedience to an overpowering fate, was capable of
+allowing the noblest of men to be beheaded, unjudged, merely to please
+a mercenary favorite!  His confession, then, had been nothing but a
+revolting piece of acting!  He had endeavored to vanquish the disgust she
+felt for him merely to ensnare her and her healing hand more surely--as
+his plaything, his physic, his sleeping draught.  And she had entered the
+trap, and acquitted him of the most horrible blood-guiltiness.
+
+He had that very day rejected, without pity, a noble Roman lady who
+petitioned for her husband's life, and with the same breath he had
+afterwards befooled her!
+
+She started up, indignant and deeply wounded.  Was it not ignominious
+even to wait here like a prisoner in obedience to the command of this
+wretch?  And she had dared for one moment to compare this monster with
+Diodoros, the handsomest, the best, and most amiable of youths!
+
+It seemed to her inconceivable.  If only he had not the power to destroy
+all that was dearest to her heart, what pleasure it would have been to
+shout in his face:
+
+"I detest you, murderer, and I am the betrothed of another, who is as
+good and beautiful as you are vile and odious!"
+
+Then the question occurred to her whether it was only for the sake of her
+healing hands that he had felt attracted to her, and had made her an
+avowal as if she were his equal.
+
+The blood mounted to her face at this thought, and with a burning brow
+she walked to the open window.
+
+A crowd of presentiments rushed into her innocent and, till then,
+unsuspecting heart, and they were all so alarming that it was a relief to
+her when a shout of joy from the panoplied breasts of several thousand
+armed men rent the air.  Mingling with this overpowering demonstration of
+united rejoicing from such huge masses, came the blare of the trumpets
+and horns of the assembled legions.  What a maddening noise!
+
+Before her lay the square, filled with many legions of warriors who
+surrounded the Serapeum in their shining armor, with their eagles and
+vexilla.  The praetorians stood by the picked men of the Macedonian
+phalanx, and with these were all the troops who had escorted the imperial
+general hither, and the garrisons of the city of Alexander who hoped to
+be called out in the next war.
+
+On the balcony, decorated with statues which surrounded the colonnade of
+the Pantheon on which the cupola rested, she saw Caracalla, and at a
+respectful distance a superb escort of his friends, in red and white
+togas, bordered with purple stripes, and wearing armor.  Having taken off
+his gold helmet, the imperial general bowed to his people, and at every
+nod of his head, and each more vigorous movement, the enthusiastic cheers
+were renewed more loudly than ever.
+
+Macrinus then stepped up to Caesar's side, and the lictors who followed
+him, by lowering their fasces, signaled to the warriors to keep silence.
+
+Instantly the ear-splitting din changed to a speechless lull.
+
+At first she still heard the lances and shields, which several of the
+warriors had waved in enthusiastic joy, ringing against the ground, and
+the clatter of the swords being put back in their sheaths; then this also
+ceased, and finally, although only the superior officers had arrived on
+horseback, the stamping of hoofs, the snorting of the horses, and the
+rattle of the chains at their bits, were the only sounds.
+
+Melissa listened breathlessly, looking first at the square and the
+soldiers below, then at the balcony where the emperor stood.  In spite
+of the aversion she felt, her heart beat quicker.  It was as if this
+immeasurable army had only one voice; as if an irresistible force drew
+all these thousands of eyes toward one point--the one little man up there
+on the Pantheon.
+
+Directly he began to speak, Melissa's glance was also fixed on Caracalla.
+
+She only heard the closing sentence, as, with raised voice, he shouted to
+the soldiers; and from it she gathered that he thanked his companions in
+arms for their anxiety, but that he still felt strong enough to share all
+their difficulties with them.  Severe exertions lay behind them.  The
+rest in this luxurious city would do them all good.  There was still much
+to be conquered in the rich East, and to add to what they had already
+won, before they could return to Rome to celebrate a well-earned triumph.
+The weary should make themselves comfortable here.  The wealthy merchants
+in whose houses he had quartered them had been told to attend to their
+wants, and if they neglected to do so every single warrior was man enough
+to show them what a soldier needed for his comfort.  The people here
+looked askance at him and his soldiers, but too much moderation would be
+misplaced.
+
+There certainly were some things even here which the host was not bound
+to supply to his military; he, Caesar, would provide them with these, and
+for that purpose he had put aside two million denarii out of his own
+poverty to distribute among them.
+
+This speech had several times been interrupted by applause, but now such
+a tremendous shout of joy went up that it would have drowned the loudest
+thunder.  The number of voices as well as their power seemed to have
+doubled.
+
+Caracalla had added another link to the golden chain which already bound
+him to these faithful people; and, as he smiled and nodded to the
+delighted crowd from the balcony, he looked like a happy, light-hearted
+youth who had prepared a great treat for himself and several beloved
+friends.
+
+What he said further was lost in the confusion of voices in the square.
+The ranks were broken up, and the cuirasses, helmets, and arms of the
+moving warriors caught the sun and sent bright beams of light crossing
+one another over the wide space surrounded with dazzling white marble
+statues.
+
+When Caracalla left the balcony, Melissa drew back from the window.
+
+The compassionate impulse to lighten the lot of a sufferer, which had
+before drawn her so strongly to Caracalla, had now lost its sense and
+meaning for this healthy, high-spirited man.  She considered herself
+cheated, as if she had been fooled by sham suffering into giving
+excessively large alms to an artful beggar.
+
+Besides, she loved her native town, and Caracalla's advice to the
+soldiers to force the citizens to provide luxurious living for them,
+had made her considerably more rebellious.  If he ever put her again
+in a position to speak her mind freely to him, she would tell him all
+undisguisedly; but instantly it again rushed into her mind that she must
+keep guard over her tongue before the easily unchained wrath of this
+despot, until her father and brothers were in safety once more.
+
+Before the emperor returned, the room was filled with people, of whom she
+knew none, excepting her old friend the white-haired, learned Samonicus.
+She was the aim and center of all eyes, and when even the kindly old man
+greeted her from a distance, and so contemptuously, that the blood rushed
+to her face, she begged Adventus to take her into the next room.
+
+The Chamberlain did as she wished, but before he left her he whispered to
+her: "Innocence is trusting; but it is not of much avail here.  Take
+care, child!  They say there are sand-banks in the Nile which, like soft
+pillows, entice one to rest.  But if you use them they become alive, and
+a crocodile creeps out, with open jaws.  I am talking already in
+metaphor, like an Alexandrian, but you will understand me."
+
+Melissa bowed acknowledgment to him, and the old man went on:
+
+"He may perhaps forget you; for many things had accumulated during his
+illness.  If the mass of business, as it comes in, is not settled for
+twenty four hours, it swells like a mill-stream that has the sluice down.
+But when work is begun, it quite carries him away.  He forgets then to
+eat and drink.  Ambassadors have arrived also from the Empress-mother,
+from Armenia, and Parthia.  If he does not ask for you in half an hour,
+it will be suppertime, and I will let you out through that door."
+
+"Do so at once," begged Melissa, with raised, petitioning hands; but the
+old man replied: "I should then reward you but ill for having warmed my
+feet for me.  Remember the crocodile under the sand!  Patience, child!
+There is Caesar's zithern.  If you can play, amuse yourself with that.
+The door shuts closely and the curtains are thick.  My old ears just now
+were listening to no purpose."
+
+But Caracalla was so far from forgetting Melissa that although he had
+attended to the communication brought to him by the ambassadors, and
+the various dispatches from the senate, he asked for her even at the door
+of the tablinum.  He had seen her from the balcony looking out on the
+square; so she had witnessed the reception his soldiers had given him.
+The magnificent spectacle must have impressed her and filled her with
+joy.  He was anxious to hear all this from her own lips, before he
+settled down to work.
+
+Adverntus whispered to him where he had taken her, to avoid the
+persecuting glances of the numerous strangers, and Caracalla nodded
+to him approvingly and went into the next room.
+
+She sat there with the zithern, letting her fingers glide gently over the
+strings.
+
+On his entering, she drew back hastily; but he cried to her brightly:
+"Do not disturb yourself.  I love that instrument.  I am having a statue
+erected to Mesomedes, the great zithern-player--you perhaps know his
+songs.  This evening, when the feast and the press of work are over, I
+will hear how you play.  I will also playa few airs to you."
+
+Melissa then plucked up courage and said, decidedly: "No, my lord; I am
+about to bid you farewell for to-day."
+
+"That sounds very determined," he answered, half surprised and half
+amused.  "But may I be allowed to know what has made you decide on this
+step?"
+
+"There is a great deal of work waiting for you," she replied, quietly.
+
+"That is my affair, not yours," was the crushing answer.
+
+"It is also mine," she said, endeavoring to keep calm; "for you have not
+yet completely recovered, and, should you require my help again this
+evening, I could not attend to your call."
+
+"No?" he asked, wrathfully, and his eyelids began to twitch.
+
+"No, my lord; for it would not be seemly in a maiden to visit you by
+night, unless you were ill and needed nursing.  As it is, I shall meet
+your friends--my heart stands still only to think of it--"
+
+"I will teach them what is due to you!" Caracalla bellowed out, and his
+brow was knit once more.
+
+"But you can not compel me," she replied, firmly, "to change my mind as
+to what is seemly," and the courage which failed her if she met a spider,
+but which stood by her in serious danger as a faithful ally, made her
+perfectly steadfast as she eagerly added: "Not an hour since you promised
+me that so long as I remained with you I should need no other protector,
+and might count on your gratitude.  But those were mere words, for, when
+I besought you to grant me some repose, you scorned my very reasonable
+request, and roughly ordered me to remain and attend on you."
+
+At this Caesar laughed aloud.
+
+"Just so!  You are a woman, and like all the rest.  You are sweet and
+gentle only so long as you have your own way."
+
+"No, indeed," cried Melissa, and her eyes filled with tears.  "I only
+look further than from one hour to the next.  If I should sacrifice what
+I think right, merely to come and go at my own will, I should soon be not
+only miserable myself, but the object of your contempt."
+
+Overcome by irresistible distress, she broke into loud sobs; but
+Caracalla, with a furious stamp of his foot, exclaimed:
+
+"No tears!  I can not, I will not see you weep.  Can any harm come to
+you?  Nothing but good; nothing but the best of happiness do I propose
+for you.  By Apollo and Zeus, that is the truth!  Till now you have been
+unlike other women, but when you behave like them, you shall--I swear it
+--you shall feel which of us two is the stronger!"
+
+He roughly snatched her hand away from her face and thereby achieved his
+end, for her indignation at being thus touched by a man's brutal hand
+gave Melissa strength to suppress her sobs.  Only her wet cheeks showed
+what a flood of tears she had shed, as, almost beside herself with anger,
+she exclaimed:
+
+"Let my hand go!  Shame on the man who insults a defenseless girl!  You
+swear!  Then I, too, may take an oath, and, by the head of my mother, you
+shall never see me again excepting as a corpse, if you ever attempt
+violence!  You are Caesar--you are the stronger.  Who ever doubted it?
+But you will never compel me to a vile action, not if you could inflict a
+thousand deaths on me instead of one!"
+
+Caracalla, without a word, had released her hand and was staring at her
+in amazement.
+
+A woman, and so gentle a woman, defying him as no man would have dared to
+do!
+
+She stood before him, her hand raised, her bosom heaving; a flame of
+anger sparkled in her eyes through their tears, and he had never before
+thought her so fair.  What majesty there was in this girl, whose simple
+grace had made him more than once address her as "child"!  She was like a
+queen, an empress; perhaps she might become one.  The idea struck him for
+the first time.  And that little hand which now fell--what soothing power
+it had, how much he owed to it!  How fervently he had wished but just now
+to be understood by her, and to be thought better of by her than by the
+rest!  And this wish still possessed him.  Nay, he was more strongly
+attracted than ever to this creature, worthy as she was of the highest in
+the land, and made doubly bewitching by her proud willfulness.  That he
+should see her for the last time seemed to him as impossible as that he
+should never again see daylight; and yet her whole aspect announced that
+her threat was serious.
+
+His aggrieved pride and offended sense of absolute power struggled with
+his love, repentance, and fear of losing her healing presence; but the
+struggle was brief, especially as a mass of business to be attended to
+lay before him like a steep hill to climb, and haste was imperative.
+
+He went up to her, shaking his head, and said in the superior tone of a
+sage rebuking thoughtlessness:
+
+"Like all the rest of them--I repeat it.  My demands had no object in
+view but to make you happy and derive comfort from you.  How hot must the
+blood be which boils and foams at the contact of a spark!  Only too like
+my own; and, since I understand you, I find it easy to forgive you.
+Indeed, I must finally express myself grateful; for I was in danger of
+neglecting my duties as a sovereign for the sake of pleasing my heart.
+Go, then, and rest, while I devote myself to business."
+
+At this, Melissa forced herself to smile, and said, still somewhat
+tearfully: "How grateful I am!  And you will not again require me to
+remain, will you, when I assure you that it is not fitting?"
+
+"Unluckily, I am not in the habit of yielding to a girl's whims."
+
+"I have no whims," she eagerly declared.  "But you will keep your word
+now, and allow me to withdraw?  I implore you to let me go!"
+
+With a deep sigh and an amount of self-control of which he would
+yesterday have thought himself incapable, he let go her hand, and she
+with a shudder thought that she had found the answer to the question he
+had asked her.  His eyes, not his words, had betrayed it; for a woman can
+see in a suitor's look what color his wishes take, while a woman's eyes
+only tell her lover whether or no she reciprocates his feelings.
+
+"I am going," she said, but he remarked the deadly paleness which
+overspread her features, and her colorless cheeks encouraged him in the
+belief that, after a sleepless night and the agitations of the last few
+hours, it was only physical exhaustion which made Melissa so suddenly
+anxious to escape from him.  So, saying kindly:
+
+"'Till to-morrow, then," he dismissed her.
+
+But when she had almost left the room, he added: "One thing more!
+To-morrow we will try our zitherns together.  After my bath is the time
+I like best for such pleasant things; Adventus will fetch you.  I am
+curious to hear you play and sing.  Of all sounds, that of the human
+voice is the sweetest.  Even the shouting of my legions is pleasing to
+the ear and heart.  Do you not think so, and does not the acclamation of
+so many thousands stir your soul?"
+
+"Certainly," she replied hastily; and she longed to reproach him for
+the injustice he was doing the populace of Alexandria to benefit his
+warriors, but she felt that the time was ill chosen, and everything
+gave way to her longing to be gone out of the dreadful man's sight.
+
+In the next room she met Philostratus, and begged him to conduct her to
+the lady Euryale; for all the anterooms were now thronged, and she had
+lost the calm confidence in which she had come thither.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+As Melissa made her way with the philosopher through the crowd,
+Philostratus said to her: "It is for your sake, child, that these
+hundreds have had so long to wait to-day, and many hopes will be
+disappointed.  To satisfy all is a giant's task.  But Caracalla must do
+it, well or ill."
+
+"Then he will forget me!" replied Melissa, with a sigh of relief.
+
+"Hardly," answered the philosopher.  He was sorry for the terrified girl,
+and in his wish to lighten her woes as far as he could, he said, gravely:
+"You called him terrible, and he can be more terrible than any man
+living.  But he has been kind to you so far, and, if you take my advice,
+you will always seem to expect nothing from him that is not good and
+noble."
+
+"Then I must be a hypocrite," replied Melissa.  "Only to-day he has
+murdered the noble Titianus."
+
+"That is an affair of state which does not concern you," replied
+Philostratus.  "Read my description of Achilles.  I represent him among
+other heroes such as Caracalla might be.  Try, on your part, to see him
+in that light.  I know that it is sometimes a pleasure to him to justify
+the good opinion of others.  Encourage your imagination to think the best
+of him.  I shall tell him that you regard him as magnanimous and noble."
+
+"No, no!"  cried Melissa; "that would make everything worse."
+
+But the philosopher interrupted her.
+
+"Trust my riper experience.  I know him.  If you let him know your true
+opinion of him, I will answer for nothing.  My Achilles reveals the good
+qualities with which he came into the world; and if you look closely you
+may still find sparks among the ashes."
+
+He here took his leave, for they had reached the vestibule leading to the
+high-priest's lodgings, and a few minutes later Melissa found herself
+with Euryale, to whom she related all that she had seen and felt.  When
+she told her older friend what Philostratus had advised, the lady stroked
+her hair, and said: "Try to follow the advice of so experienced a man.
+It can not be very difficult.  When a woman's heart has once been
+attached to a man--and pity is one of the strongest of human ties--the
+bond may be strained and worn, but a few threads must always remain."
+
+But Melissa hastily broke in:
+
+"There is not a spider's thread left which binds me to that cruel man.
+The murder of Titianus has snapped them all."
+
+"Not so," replied the lady, confidently.  "Pity is the only form of love
+which even the worst crime can not eradicate from a kind heart.  You
+prayed for Caesar before you knew him, and that was out of pure human
+charity.  Exercise now a wider compassion, and reflect that Fate has
+called you to take care of a hapless creature raving in fever and hard
+to deal with.  How many Christian women, especially such as call
+themselves deaconesses, voluntarily assume such duties!  and good is
+good, right is right for all, whether they pray to one God or to several.
+If you keep your heart pure, and constantly think of the time which shall
+be fulfilled for each of us, to our ruin or to our salvation, you will
+pass unharmed through this great peril.  I know it, I feel it."
+
+"But you do not know him," exclaimed Melissa, "and how terrible he can
+be!  And Diodoros!  When he is well again, if he hears that I am with
+Caesar, in obedience to his call whenever he sends for me, and if evil
+tongues tell him dreadful things about me, he, too, will condemn me!"
+
+"No, no," the matron declared, kissing her brow and eyes.  "If he loves
+you truly, he will trust you."
+
+"He loves me," sobbed Melissa; "but, even if he does not desert me when I
+am thus branded, his father will come between us."
+
+"God forbid!" cried Euryale.  "Remain what you are, and I will always be
+the same to you, come what may; and those who love you will not refuse to
+listen to an old woman who has grown gray in honor."
+
+And Melissa believed her motherly, kind, worthy friend; and, with the new
+confidence which revived in her, her longing for her lover began to stir
+irresistibly.  She wanted a fond glance from the eyes of the youth who
+loved her, and to whom, for another man's sake, she could not give all
+his due, nay, who had perhaps a right to complain of her.  This she
+frankly confessed, and the matron herself conducted the impatient girl to
+see Diodoros.
+
+Melissa again found Andreas in attendance on the sufferer, and she was
+surprised at the warmth with which the high-priest's wife greeted the
+Christian.
+
+Diodoros was already able to be dressed and to sit up.  He was pale
+and weak, and his head was still bound up, but he welcomed the girl
+affectionately, though with a mild reproach as to the rarity of her
+visits.
+
+Andreas had already informed him that Melissa was kept away by her
+mediation for the prisoners, and so he was comforted by her assurance
+that if her duty would allow of it she would never leave him again.  And
+the joy of having her there, the delight of gazing into her sweet, lovely
+face, and the youthful gift of forgetting the past in favor of the
+present, silenced every bitter reflection.  He was soon blissfully
+listening to her with a fresh color in his cheeks, and never had he seen
+her so tender, so devoted, so anxious to show him the fullness of her
+great love.  The quiet, reserved girl was to-day the wooer, and with the
+zeal called forth by her ardent wish to do him good, she expressed all
+the tenderness of her warm heart so frankly and gladly that to him it
+seemed as though Eros had never till now pierced her with the right
+shaft.
+
+As soon as Euryale was absorbed in conversation with Andreas, she offered
+him her lips with gay audacity, as though in defiance of some stern
+dragon of virtue, and he, drunk with rapture, enjoyed what she granted
+him.  And soon it was he who became daring, declaring that there would be
+time enough to talk another day; that for the present her rosy mouth had
+nothing to do but to cure him with kisses.  And during this sweet give
+and take, she implored him with pathetic fervor never, never to doubt her
+love, whatever he might hear of her.  Their older friends, who had turned
+their backs on the couple and were talking busily by a window, paid no
+heed to them, and the blissful conviction of being loved as ardently as
+she loved flooded her whole being.
+
+Only now and then did the thought of Caesar trouble for a moment the
+rapture of that hour, like a hideous form appearing out of distant
+clouds.  She felt prompted indeed to tell her lover everything, but it
+seemed so difficult to make him understand exactly how everything had
+happened, and Diodoros must not be distressed.  And, indeed, intoxicated
+as he was with heated passion, he made the attempt impossible.
+
+When he spoke it was only to assure her of his love; and when the lady
+Euryale at last called her to go, and looked in the girl's glowing face,
+Melissa felt as though she were snatched from a rapturous dream.
+
+In the anteroom they were stopped by Andreas.  Euryale had indeed
+relieved his worst fears, still he was anxious to lay before the girl the
+question whether she would not be wise to take advantage of this very
+night to make her escape.  She, however, her eyes still beaming with
+happiness, laid her little hand coaxingly on his bearded mouth, and
+begged him not to sadden her high spirits and hopes of a better time by
+warnings and dismal forecasts.  Even the lady Euryale had advised her to
+trust fearlessly to herself, and sitting with her lover she had acquired
+the certainty that it was best so.  The freedman could not bear to
+disturb this happy confidence, and only impressed on Melissa that she
+should send for him if ever she needed him.  He would find her a hiding-
+place, and the lady Euryale had undertaken to provide a messenger.  He
+then bade them godspeed, and they returned to the high-priest's dwelling.
+
+In the vestibule they found a servant from the lady Berenike; in his
+mistress's name he desired Euryale to send Melissa to spend the night
+with her.
+
+This invitation, which would remove Melissa from the Serapeum, was
+welcome to them both, and the matron herself accompanied the young girl
+down a private staircase leading to a small side-door.  Argutis, who had
+come to inquire for his young mistress, was to be her escort and to bring
+her back early next morning to the same entrance.
+
+The old slave had much to tell her.  He had been on his feet all day.  He
+had been to the harbor to inquire as to the return of the vessel with the
+prisoners on board; to the Serapeum to inquire for her; to Dido, to give
+her the news.  He had met Alexander in the forenoon on the quay where the
+imperial galleys were moored.  When the young man learned that the
+trireme could not come in before next morning at the soonest, he had set
+out to cross the lake and see Zeus and his daughter.  He had charged
+Argutis to let Melissa know that his longing for the fair Agatha gave him
+no peace.
+
+He and old Dido disapproved of their young master's feather-brain, which
+had not been made more steady and patient even by the serious events of
+this day and his sister's peril; however, he did not allow a word of
+blame to escape him.  He was happy only to be allowed to walk behind
+Melissa, and to hear from her own lips that all was well with her, and
+that Caesar was gracious.
+
+Alexander, indeed, had also told the old man that he and Caesar were
+"good friends"; and now the slave was thinking of Pandion, Theocritus,
+and the other favorites of whom he had heard; and he assured Melissa
+that, as soon as her father should be free, Caracalla would be certain to
+raise him to the rank of knight, to give him lands and wealth, perhaps
+one of the imperial residences on the Bruchium.  Then he, Argutis, would
+be house steward, and show that he knew other things besides keeping the
+workroom and garden in order, splitting wood, and buying cheaply at
+market.
+
+Melissa laughed and said he should be no worse off if only the first wish
+of her heart were fulfilled, and she were wife to Diodoros; and Argutis
+declared he would be amply content if only she allowed him to remain with
+her.
+
+But she only half listened and answered absently, for she breathed faster
+as she pictured to herself how she would show Caesar, on whom she had
+already proved her power, that she had ceased to tremble before him.
+
+Thus they came to the house of Seleukus.
+
+A large force had taken up their quarters there.  In the pillared hall
+beyond the vestibule bearded soldiers were sitting on benches or
+squatting in groups on the ground, drinking noisily and singing, or
+laughing and squabbling as they threw the dice on the costly mosaic
+pavement.  A riotous party were toping and reveling in the beautiful
+garden of the impluvium round a fire which they had lighted on the velvet
+turf.  A dozen or so of officers had stretched themselves on cushions
+under one of the colonnades, and, without attempting to check the wild
+behavior of their men, were watching the dancing of some Egyptian girls
+who had been brought into the house of their involuntary host.  Although
+Melissa was closely veiled and accompanied by a servant, she did not
+escape rude words and insolent glances.  Indeed, an audacious young
+praetorian had put out his hand to pull away her veil, but an older
+officer stopped him.
+
+The lady Berenike's rooms had so far not been intruded on; for Macrinus,
+the praetorian prefect, who knew Berenike through her brother-in-law the
+senator Coeranus, had given orders that the women's apartments were to be
+exempt from the encroachments of the quartermaster of the body-guard.
+Breathing rapidly and with a heightened color, Melissa at last entered
+the room of Seleukus's wife.
+
+The matron's voice was full of bitterness as she greeted her young
+visitor with the exclamation "You look as if you had fled to escape
+persecution!  And in my house, too!  Or"--and her large eyes flashed
+brightly--"or is the blood-hound on the track of his prey?  My boat is
+quite ready--"  When Melissa denied this, and related what had happened,
+Berenike exclaimed: "But you know that the panther lies still and gathers
+himself up before he springs; or, if you do not, you may see it to-morrow
+at the Circus.  There is to be a performance in Caesar's honor, the like
+of which not even Nero ever saw.  My husband bears the chief part cf the
+cost, and can think of nothing else.  He has even forgotten his only
+child, and all to please the man who insults us, robs and humiliates us!
+Now that men kiss the hands which maltreat them, it is the part of women
+to defy them.  You must fly, child!  The harbor is now closed, but it
+will be open again to-morrow morning, and, if your folks are set free in
+the course of the day, then away with you at once!  Or do you really hope
+for any good from the tyrant who has made this house what you now
+see it?"
+
+"I know him," replied Melissa, "and I look for nothing but the worst."
+
+At this the elder woman warmly grasped the girl's hand, but she was
+interrupted by the waiting woman Johanna, who said that a Roman officer
+of rank, a tribune, craved to be admitted.
+
+When Berenike refused to receive him, the maid assured her that he was a
+young man, and had expressed his wish to bring an urgent request to the
+lady's notice in a becoming and modest manner.
+
+On this the matron allowed him to be shown in to her, and Melissa hastily
+obeyed her instructions to withdraw into the adjoining room.
+
+Only a half-drawn curtain divided it from the room where Berenike
+received the soldier, and without listening she could hear the loud voice
+which riveted her attention as soon as she had recognized it.
+
+The young tribune, in a tone of courteous entreaty, begged his hostess to
+provide a room for his brother, who was severely wounded.  The sufferer
+was in a high fever, and the physician said that the noise and rattle of
+vehicles in the street, on which the room where he now lay looked out,
+and the perpetual coming and going of the men, might endanger his life.
+He had just been told that on the side of the women's apartments there
+was a row of rooms looking out on the impluvium, and he ventured to
+entreat her to spare one of them for the injured man.  If she had a
+brother or a child, she would forgive the boldness of his request.
+
+So far she listened in silence; then she suddenly raised her head and
+measured the petitioner's tall figure with a lurid fire in her eye.  Then
+she replied, while she looked into his handsome young face with a half-
+scornful, half-indignant air: "Oh, yes!  I know what it is to see one we
+love suffer.  I had an only child; she was the joy of my heart.  Death--
+death snatched her from me, and a few days later the sovereign whom
+you serve commanded us to prepare a feast for him.  It seemed to him
+something new and delightful to hold a revel in a house of mourning.
+At the last moment--all the guests were assembled--he sent us word that
+he himself did not intend to appear.  But his friends laughed and reveled
+wildly enough!  They enjoyed themselves, and no doubt praised our cook
+and our wine.  And now--another honor we can duly appreciate!--he sends
+his praetorians to turn this house of mourning into a tavern, a wine-
+shop, where they call creatures in from the street to dance and sing.
+The rank to which you have risen while yet so young shows that you are of
+good family, so you can imagine how highly we esteem the honor of seeing
+your men trampling, destroying, and burning in their camp-fires
+everything which years of labor and care had produced to make our little
+garden a thing of beauty.  Only look down on them!  Macrinus, who
+commands you, promised me, moreover, that the women's apartments should
+be respected.  No praetorian, whether common soldier or commander,' and
+here she raised her voice, "shall set foot within them!  Here is his
+writing.  The prefect set the seal beneath it in Caesar's name."
+
+"I know of the order, noble lady," interrupted Nemesianus, "and should be
+the last to wish to act against it.  I do not demand, I only appeal
+humbly to the heart of a woman and a mother.'
+
+"A mother!"  broke  in Berenike, scornfully; "yes! and one whose soul
+your lord has pierced with daggers--a woman whose home has been
+dishonored and made hateful to her.  I have enjoyed sufficient honor now,
+and shall stand firmly on my rights."
+
+"Hear but one thing more," began the youth, timidly; but the lady
+Berenike had already turned her back upon him, and returned with a proud
+and stately carriage to Melissa in the adjoining apartment.
+
+Breathing hard, as if stunned by her words, the tribune remained standing
+on the threshold where the terrible lady had vanished from his sight, and
+then, striving to regain his composure, pushed back the curling locks
+from his brow.  But scarcely had Berenike entered the other room than
+Melissa whispered to her: "The wounded man is the unfortunate Aurelius,
+whose face Caracalla wounded for my sake."
+
+At this the lady's eyes suddenly flashed and blazed so strangely that the
+girl's blood ran cold.  But she had no time to ask the reason of this
+emotion, for the next moment the queenly woman grasped the weaker one by
+the wrist with her strong right hand, and with a commanding "Come with
+me," drew her back into the room they had just quitted.  She called to
+the tribune, whose hand was already on the door, to come back.
+
+The young man stood still, surprised and startled to see Melissa; but the
+lady Berenike said, calmly, "Now that I have learned the honor that has
+been accorded to you, too, by the master whom you so faithfully serve,
+the poor injured man whom you call your brother shall be made welcome
+within these walls.  He is my companion in suffering.  A quiet, airy
+chamber shall be set apart for him, and he shall not lack careful
+attention, nor anything which even his own mother could offer him.
+Only two things I desire of you in return: that you admit no one of your
+companions-in-arms, nor any man whatever, into this dwelling, save only
+the physician whom I shall send to you.  Furthermore, that you do not
+betray, even to your nearest friend, whom you found here besides myself."
+
+Under the mortification that had wounded his brotherly heart, Aurelius
+Nemesianus had lost countenance; but now he replied with a soldier's
+ready presence of mind: "It is difficult for me to find a proper answer
+to you, noble lady.  I know right well that I owe you my warmest thanks,
+and equally so that he whom you call our master has inflicted as deep a
+wrong on us as on you; but Caesar is still my military chief."
+
+"Still!" broke in Berenike.  "But you are too youthful a tribune for me
+to believe that you took up the sword as a means of livelihood."
+
+"We are sons of the Aurelia," answered Nemesianus, haughtily, "and it is
+very possible that this day's work may be the cause of our deserting the
+eagles we have followed in order to win glory and taste the delights of
+warfare.  But all that is for the future to decide.  Meanwhile, I thank
+you, noble lady, and also in the name of my brother, who is my second
+self.  On behalf of Apollinaris, too, I beg you to pardon the rudeness
+which we offered to this maiden--"
+
+"I am not angry with you any more," cried Melissa, eagerly and frankly,
+and the tribune thanked her in his own and his brother's name.
+
+He began trying to explain the unfortunate occurrence, but Berenike
+admonished him to lose no time.  The soldier withdrew, and the lady
+Berenike ordered her handmaiden to call the housekeeper and other
+serving-women.  Then she repaired quickly to the room she had destined
+for the wounded man and his brother.  But neither Melissa nor the other
+women could succeed in really lending her any help, for she herself put
+forth all her cleverness and power of head and hand, forgetting nothing
+that might be useful or agreeable in the nursing of the sick.  In that
+wealthy, well-ordered house everything stood ready to hand; and in less
+than a quarter of an hour the tribune Nemesianus was informed that the
+chamber was ready for the reception of his brother.
+
+The lady then returned with Melissa to her own sleeping apartment, and
+took various little bottles and jars from a small medicine-chest, begging
+the girl at the same time to excuse her, as she intended to undertake the
+nursing of the wounded man herself.  Here were books, and there Korinna's
+lute.  Johanna would attend to the evening meal.  Tomorrow morning they
+could consult further as to what was necessary to be done; then she
+kissed her guest and left the room.
+
+Left to herself, Melissa gave herself up to varying thoughts, till
+Johanna brought her repast.  While she hardly nibbled at it, the
+Christian told her that matters looked ill with the tribune, and that the
+wound in the forehead especially caused the physician much anxiety.  Many
+questions were needed to draw this much from the freedwoman, for she
+spoke but little.  When she did speak, however, it was with great
+kindliness, and there lay something so simple and gentle in her whole
+manner that it awakened confidence.  Having satisfied her appetite,
+Melissa returned to the lady Berenike's apartment; but there her heart
+grew heavy at the thought of what awaited her on the morrow.  When, at
+the moment of leaving, Johanna inquired whether she desired anything
+further, she asked her if she knew a saying of her fellow-believers,
+which ran, "The fullness of time was come."
+
+"Yes, surely," returned the other; "our Lord himself spoke them, and Paul
+wrote them to the Galatians."
+
+"Who is this Paul?" Melissa asked; and the Christian replied that of all
+the teachers of her faith he was the one she most dearly loved.  Then,
+hesitating a little, she asked if Melissa, being a heathen, had inquired
+the meaning of this saying.
+
+"Andrew, the freedman of Polybius and the lady Euryale, explained it to
+me.  Did the moment ever come to you in which you felt assured that for
+you the time was fulfilled?"
+
+"Yes," replied Johanna, with decision; "and that moment comes, sooner or
+later, in every life."
+
+"You are a maiden like myself," began Melissa, simply.  "A heavy task
+lies before me, and if you would confide to me--"
+
+But the Christian broke in: "My life has moved in other paths than yours,
+and what has happened to me, the freedwoman and the Christian, can have
+no interest for you.  But the saying which has stirred your soul refers
+to the coming of One who is all in all to us Christians.  Did Andrew tell
+you nothing of His life?"
+
+"Only a little," answered the girl, "but I would gladly hear more of
+Him."
+
+Then the Christian seated herself at Melissa's side, and, clasping the
+maiden's hand in hers, told her of the birth of the Saviour, of His
+loving heart, and His willing death as a sacrifice for the sins of the
+whole world.  The girl listened with attentive ear.  With no word did she
+interrupt the narrative, and the image of the Crucified One rose before
+her mind's eye, pure and noble, and worthy of all love.  A thousand
+questions rose to her lips, but, before she could ask one, the Christian
+was called away to attend the lady Berenike, and Melissa was again alone.
+
+What she had already heard of the teaching of the Christians occurred to
+her once more, and above all that first saying from the sacred Scriptures
+which had attracted her attention, and about which she had just asked
+Johanna.  Perhaps for her, too, the time was already fulfilled, when she
+had taken courage to defy the emperor's commands.
+
+She rejoiced at this action, for she felt that the strength would never
+fail her now to set her will against his.  She felt as though she bore a
+charm against his power since she had parted from her lover, and since
+the murder of the governor had opened her eyes to the true character of
+him on whom she had all too willingly expended her pity.  And yet she
+shuddered at the thought of meeting the emperor again, and of having to
+show him that she felt safe with him because she trusted to his
+generosity.
+
+Lost in deep thought, she waited for the return of the lady and the
+Christian waiting-woman, but in vain.  At last her eye fell upon the
+scrolls which the lady Berenike had pointed out to her.  They lay in
+beautiful alabaster caskets on an ebony stand.  If they had only been
+the writings of the Christians, telling of the life and death of their
+Saviour!  But how should writings such as those come here?  The casket
+only held the works of Philostratus, and she took from it the roll
+containing the story of the hero of whom he had himself spoken to her.
+Full of curiosity, she smoothed out the papyrus with the ivory stick, and
+her attention was soon engaged by the lively conversation between the
+vintner and his Phoenician guest.  She passed rapidly over the beginning,
+but soon reached the part of which Philostratus had told her.  Under the
+form of Achilles he had striven to represent Caracalla as he appeared to
+the author's indulgent imagination.  But it was no true portrait; it
+described the original at most as his mother would have wished him to be.
+There it was written that the vehemence flashing from the hero's bright
+eyes, even when peacefully inclined, showed how easily his wrath could
+break forth.  But to those who loved him he was even more endearing
+during these outbursts than before.  The Athenians felt toward him as
+they did toward a lion; for, if the king of beasts pleased them when he
+was at rest, he charmed them infinitely more when, foaming with
+bloodthirsty rage, he fell upon a bull, a wild boar, or some such
+ferocious animal.
+
+Yes, indeed!  Caracalla, too, fell mercilessly upon his prey!  Had she
+not seen him hewing down Apollinaris a few hours ago?
+
+Furthermore, Achilles was said to have declared that he could drive away
+care by fearlessly encountering the greatest dangers for the sake of his
+friends.  But where were Caracalla's friends?
+
+At best, the allusion could only refer to the Roman state, for whose sake
+the emperor certainly did endure many a hardship and many a wearisome
+task, and he was not the only person who had told her so.
+
+Then she turned back a little and found the words: "But because he was
+easily inclined to anger, Chiron instructed him in music; for is it not
+inherent in this art to soothe violence and wrath--And Achilles acquired
+without trouble the laws of harmony and sang to the lyre."
+
+This all corresponded with the truth, and tomorrow she was to discover
+what had suggested to Philostratus the story that when Achilles begged
+Calliope to endow him with the gifts of music and poetry she had given
+him so much of both as he required to enliven the feast and banish
+sadness.  He was also said to be a poet, and devoted himself most
+ardently to verse when resting from the toils of war.
+
+To hear that man unjustly blamed on whom her heart is set, only
+increases a woman's love; but unmerited praise makes her criticise him
+more sharply, and is apt to transform a fond smile into a scornful one.
+Thus the picture that raised Caracalla to the level of an Achilles made
+Melissa shrug her shoulders over the man she dreaded; and while she even
+doubted Caesar's musical capacities, Diodoros's young, fresh, bell-like
+voice rose doubly beautiful and true upon her memory's ear.  The image of
+her lover finally drove out that of the emperor, and, while she seemed to
+hear the wedding song which the youths and maidens were so soon to sing
+for them both, she fell asleep.
+
+It was late when Johanna came to admonish her to retire to rest.  Shortly
+before sunrise she was awakened by Berenike, who wished to take some
+rest, and who told her, before seeking her couch, that Apollinaris was
+doing well.  The lady was still sleeping when Johanna came to inform
+Melissa that the slave Argutis was waiting to see her.
+
+The Christian undertook to convey the maiden's farewell greetings to her
+mistress.
+
+As they entered the living-room, the gardener had just brought in fresh
+flowers, among them three rose-bushes covered with full-blown flowers and
+half-opened, dewy buds.  Melissa asked Johanna timidly if the lady
+Berenike would permit her to pluck one--there were so many; to which the
+Christian replied that it would depend on the use it was to be put to.
+
+"Only for the sick tribune," answered Melissa, reddening.  So Johanna
+plucked two of the fairest blooms and gave them to the maiden--one for
+the man who had injured her and one for her betrothed.  Melissa kissed
+her, gratefully, and begged her to present the flowers to the sick man in
+her name.
+
+Johanna carried out her wish at once; but the wounded man, gazing
+mournfully at the rose, murmured to himself: "Poor, lovely, gentle
+child!  She will be ruined or dead before Caracalla leaves Alexandria!"
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Obstacles existed only to be removed
+Speaking ill of others is their greatest delight
+The past must stand; it is like a scar
+
+
+
+
+
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