s quivered; but when he offered Caesar a soothing potion, he waved
him away, and commanded him to cease from troubling him.

For all that, he listened a little later to the legate, who brought
the news that the youths of the city assembled on the race-course
were beginning to be impatient. They were singing and applauding
boisterously, and the songs they so loudly insisted on having repeated
would certainly not contain matter flattering to the Romans.

"Leave them alone," answered Caesar, roughly. "Every line is aimed at me
and no other. But the condemned are always allowed their favorite meal
before the last journey. The food they love is venomous satire. Let them
enjoy it to the full once more!--Is it far to Zminis's prison?"

The reply was in the negative; and as Caracalla exclaimed, "So much the
better!" a significant smile played on his lips.

The high-priest of Serapis had looked on in much distress of mind. He,
as the head of the Museum, had set high hopes on the youth who had
come to such a terrible end. If Caesar should carry his threats into
execution, there would be an end to that celebrated home of learning
which, in his opinion, bore such noble fruits of study. And what could
Caracalla mean by his dark saying that the sport and mockery of those
youths below was their last meal? The worst might indeed be expected
from the fearful tyrant who was at once so deeply wounded and
so grievously offended; and the high-priest had already sent
messengers--Greeks of good credit--to warn the insurgent youths in the
stadium. But, as the chief minister of the divinity, he also esteemed it
his duty, at any risk to himself, to warn the despot, whom he saw on the
verge of being carried away to deeds of unparalleled horror. He thought
the time had come, when Caracalla looked up from the brooding reverie
into which he had again sunk, and with an ominous scowl asked Timotheus
whether his wife, under whose protection Melissa had been seen the
day before, had known that the false-hearted girl had given herself to
another man while she feigned love for him.

The high-priest repelled the suspicion with his usual dignity, and went
on to adjure Caesar not to visit on an industrious and dutiful community
the sins of a light-minded girl's base folly and falsehood.

But Caracalla would not suffer him to finish; he wrathfully inquired who
had given him a right to force his advice on Caesar.

On this Timotheus replied, with calm dig