elf held
his mocking tongue.

The rest of the spectators also kept anxious and uneasy silence while
the lictors bound Zminis's hands, and, in spite of his attempts to raise
his voice once more in self-defense, dragged him away and thrust him out
across the threshold of the dining-hall. The door closed behind him,
and no applause followed, though every one approved of the Egyptian's
condemnation, for Caracalla was still weeping.

Was it possible that these tears could be shed for sick people whom
he did not know, and for the coarse gladiator, the butcher of men and
beasts, who had had nothing to give Caesar but a few hours of excitement
at the intoxicating performances in the arena? So it must be; for from
time to time Caracalla moaned softly, "Those unhappy sick!" or "Poor
Tarautas!"

And, indeed, at this moment Caracalla himself could not have said
whom he was lamenting. He had in the Circus staked his life on that of
Tarautas, and when he shed tears over his memory it was certainly
less for the gladiator's sake than over the approaching end of his
own existence, to which he looked forward in consequence of Tarautas's
death. But he had often been near the gates of Hades in the battle-field
with calm indifference; and now, while he thus bewailed the sick and
Tarautas with bitter lamentations, in his mind he saw no sick-bed, nor,
indeed, the stunted form of the braggart hero of the arena, but the
slender, graceful figure of a sweet girl, and a blackened, charred arm
on which glittered a golden armlet.

That woman! Treacherous, shameless, but how lovely and beloved! That
woman, under his eyes, as it were, was swept out of the land of the
living; and with her, with Melissa, the only girl for whom his heart had
ever throbbed faster, the miracle-worker who had possessed the unique
power of exorcising his torments, whose love--for so he still chose to
believe, though he had always refused her petitions that he would show
mercy--whose love would have given him strength to become a benefactor
to all mankind, a second Trajan or Titus. He had quite forgotten that
he had intended her to meet a disgraceful end in the arena under fearful
torments, if she had been brought to him a prisoner. He felt as though
the fate of Roxana, with whom his most cherished dream had perished, had
quite broken his heart; and it was Melissa whom he really bewailed, with
the gladiator's name on his lips and the jewel before his eyes which had
been