f hospitality; to her they were cordial hosts. I will remember
that in their favor. And if many escape unpunished, I would have the
traitors to know that they owe it to the hospitality shown to my mother
by their parents, or perhaps by themselves."

He was here interrupted by the arrival of Aristides, who entered in
great haste and apparently pleased excitement. His spies had seized a
malefactor who had affixed an epigram of malignant purport to the statue
of Julia Domna in the Caesareum. The writer was a pupil of the Museum,
and had been taken in the stadium, where he was boasting of his exploit.
A spy, mingling with the crowd, had laid hands on him, and the captain
of the watch had forthwith hurried to the Serapeum to boast of a success
which might confirm him in his yet uncertain position. The rough sketch
of the lines had been found on the culprit, and Aristides held the
tablets on which they were written while Caracalla listened to his
report. Aristides was breathless with eagerness, and Caesar, snatching
the tablets impatiently from his hand, read the following lines:

"Wanton, I say, is this dam of irreconcilable brothers!" "Mean you
Jocasta?" "Nay, worse--Julia, the wife of Severus."

"The worst of all--but the last!" Caracalla snarled, as, turning pale,
he laid the tablets down. But he almost instantly took them up again,
and handing the malignant and lying effusion to the high-priest, he
exclaimed, with a laugh:

"This seals the warrant! Here is my mother slandered, too! Now, the man
who sues for mercy condemns himself to death!" And, clinching his fist,
he muttered, "And this, too, is from the Museum."

Timotheus, meanwhile, had also read the lines. Even paler than
Caracalla, and fully aware that any further counsel would be thrown
away and only turn the emperor's wrath against himself, he expressed his
anger at this calumny directed against the noblest of women, and by a
boy hardly free from school!

But Caracalla furiously broke in:

"And woe to you if your god refuses me the only thing I crave in return
for so many sacrifices--revenge, complete and sanguinary; atonement from
great and small alike!" But he interrupted himself with the exclamation:
"He grants it! Now for the tool I need."

The tool was ready--Zminis, the Egyptian, answering in every particular
to the image which Caracalla had had in his mind of the instrument who
might execute his most bloodthirsty purpose.

With hair in disorder a