thoughts, and the capture of the criminal
would have pacified him; as it was, he could only regard the death of
the lion as a fresh stroke of fate directed against himself. He sat
absorbed in sullen gloom, muttering frantic curses, and haughtily
desired the high-priest to restore the offering he had wasted on a god
who was so malignant, and as hostile to him as all else in this city of
abomination.

He then rose, desired every one to stand back from where the lion lay,
and gazed down at the beast for many minutes. And as he looked, his
excited imagination showed him Melissa stroking the noble brute, and the
lion lashing the ground with his tail when he heard the light step of
her little feet. He could hear the music of her voice when she spoke
coaxingly to the lion; and then again he started off to search the rooms
once more, shouting her name, heedless of the bystanders, till Macrinus
made so bold as to assure him that the slaughterer's report must have
been false. He must have mistaken some one else for Melissa, for it
was proved beyond a doubt that Melissa had been burned in her father's
house.

At this Caesar looked the prefect in the face with glazed and wandering
eyes, and Macrinus started in horror as he suddenly shrieked, "The deed,
the deed!" and struck his brow with his fist.

From that hour Caracalla had lost forever the power of distinguishing
the illusions which pursued him from reality.

CHAPTER XXXV.

A week later Caracalla quitted Alexandria to make war on the Parthians.
What finally drove the unhappy man to hurry from the hated place was the
torturing fear of sharing his lion's fate, and of being sent after the
murdered Tarautas by the friends who had heard his appeal to fate.

Quite mad he was not, for the illusions which haunted him were often
absent for several hours, when he spoke with perfect lucidity, received
reports, and gave orders. It was with peculiar terror that his soul
avoided every recollection of his mother, of Theokritus, and all
those whose opinion he had formerly valued and whose judgment was not
indifferent to him.

In constant terror of the dagger of an avenger--a dread which, with
many other peculiarities, the leech could hardly ascribe to the diseased
phenomena of his mental state--he only showed himself to his soldiers,
and he might often be seen making a meal off a pottage he himself had
cooked to escape the poison which had been fatal to his lion. He was
never fo