o be questioned by the lady, he poured out to her the news that
he would have been overjoyed to have shouted in the market-place for all
to hear.

The reception accorded to him at Caesar's table, he declared, had been
flattering beyond all words. The godlike monarch had treated him more
considerately, nay, sometimes with more reverence, than his own sons.
The best dishes had been put before him, and Caracalla had asked all
sorts of questions about his future consort, and, on hearing that
Melissa had sent him greetings, he had raised himself and drunk to him
as if he were a friend.

His table-companions, too, had treated Heron with every distinction.
Immediately on his arrival the monarch had desired them to honor him
as the father of the future empress. They had all agreed with him in
demanding that Zminis the Egyptian should be punished with death, and
had even encouraged him to give the reins to his righteous anger. He, if
any one, was in the habit of being moderate in all things, if only as
a good example to his sons; and he had proved in many a Dionysiac feast
that the god could not easily overpower him. The amount of wine he
had drunk to-day would generally have had no more effect upon him than
water, and yet he had felt now and then as if he were drunken, and the
whole festal hall turned round with him. Even now he would be quite
incapable of walking forward in a given straight line.

With the exclamation, "Such is life!--a few hours ago on the
rowing-bench, and fighting with the brander of the galleys for trying
to brand me with the slave-mark, and now one of the greatest among the
great!" he closed his tale, for a glance through the window showed him
that time pressed.

With strange bashfulness he then gazed at a ring upon his right hand,
and said hesitatingly that his own modesty made the avowal difficult to
him; but the fact was, he was not the same man as when he last left
the ladies. By the grace of the emperor he had been made a praetorian.
Caesar had at first wanted to make him a knight; but he esteemed his
Macedonian descent higher than that class, to which too many freed
slaves belonged for his taste. This he had frankly acknowledged, and the
emperor must have considered his objections valid, for he immediately
spoke a few words to the prefect Macrinus, and then told the others to
greet him as senator with the rank of praetorian.

Then indeed he felt as if the seat beneath him were transformed into