e easy to hide under your cloak. For whom you
will. Caesar has given the golden apple of Paris to a goddess of
this town. I should best like to see these flung at her brother, the
sycophant."

"Do you know them?" asked Diodoros, hoarsely.

"No," replied the old woman. "No need for that. I have plenty of
customers and good ears. The slut broke her word with a handsome youth
of the town for the sake of the Roman, and they who do such things are
repaid by the avenging gods." Diodoros felt his knees failing under
him, and a wrathful answer was on his lips, when the huckster suddenly
shouted like mad: "Caesar, Caesar! He is coming."

The shouts of the crowd hailing their emperor had already become audible
through the heavy evening air, at first low and distant, and louder by
degrees. They now suddenly rose to a deafening uproar, and while the
sound rolled on like approaching thunder, broken by shrill whistles
suggesting lightning, the sturdy old apple-seller clambered unaided on
to her table, and shouted with all her might:

"Caesar! Here he is!--Hail, hail, hail to great Caesar!"

At the imminent risk of tumbling off her platform, she bent low down
to reach under the table for the blue cloth which covered her store of
rotten apples, snatched it off, and waved it with frantic enthusiasm,
as though her elderly heart had suddenly gone forth to the very man for
whom a moment ago she had been ready to sell her disgusting missiles.
And still she shouted in ringing tones, "Hail, hail, Caesar!" again
and again, with all her might, till there was no breath left in her
overbuxom, panting breast, and her round face was purple with the
effort. Nay, her emotion was so vehement that the bright tears streamed
down her fat cheeks.

And every one near was shrieking like the applewoman, "Hail, Caesar!"
and it was only where the crowd was densest that a sharp whistle now and
then rent the roar of acclamations.

Diodoros, meanwhile, had turned to look at the main entrance, and,
carried away by the universal desire to see, had perched himself on an
unopened case of dried figs. His tall figure now towered far above
the throng, and he set his teeth as he heard the old woman, almost
speechless with delight, gasp out:

"Lovely! wonderful! He would never have found the like in Rome. Here,
among us--"

But the cheers of the multitude now drowned every other sound. Fathers
or mothers who had children with them lifted them up as high as they