sat down on a seat in front of
the writing-table strewn with tablets and papyrus-rolls, rearranged
the end of the purple toga for which he had exchanged his bathing-robe,
rested one foot on the lion's neck and his head on his hand. He would
receive this wonderful girl in the character of an anxious sovereign
meditating on the welfare of his people.

CHAPTER XVII.

The philosopher announced the visitor to Caesar, and as some little
time elapsed before Melissa came in, Caracalla forgot his theatrical
assumption, and sat with a drooping head; for, in consequence, no doubt,
of the sunshine which beat on the top of his head, the pain had suddenly
become almost unendurably violent.

Without vouchsafing a glance at Melissa, he swallowed one of the
alleviating pills left him by Galenus, and hid his face in his hands.
The girl came forward, fearless of the lion, for Philostratos had
assured her that he was tamed, and most animals were willing to let her
touch them. Nor was she afraid of Caesar himself, for she saw that he
was in pain, and the alarm with which she had crossed the threshold
gave way to pity. Philostratus kept at her side, and anxiously watched
Caracalla.

The courage the simple girl showed in the presence of the ferocious
brute, and the not less terrible man, struck him favorably, and his
hopes rose as a sunbeam fell on her shining hair, which the lady
Berenike had arranged with her own hand, twining it with strands of
white Bombyx. She must appear, even to this ruthless profligate, as the
very type of pure and innocent grace.

Her long robe and peplos, of the finest white wool, also gave her an air
of distinction which suited the circumstances. It was a costly garment,
which Berenike had had made for Korinna, and she had chosen it from
among many instead of the plainer robe in which old Dido had dressed
her young mistress. With admirable taste the matron had aimed at giving
Melissa a simple, dignified aspect, unadorned and almost priestess-like
in its severity. Nothing should suggest the desire to attract, and
everything must exclude the idea of a petitioner of the poorer and
commoner sort.

Philostratus saw that her appearance had been judiciously cared for; but
Caesar's long silence, of which he knew the reason, began to cause him
some uneasiness: for, though pain sometimes softened the despot's mood,
it more often prompted him to revenge himself, as it were, for his own
sufferings, by brutal atta