s are the stars, whose
orbits are as unchanging and everlasting as are the first causes of all
that exists or happens."

"And are you quite sure that you never read wrongly in this great
record?" asked Antinous.

"Even I may err," replied Hadrian. "But this time I have not deceived
myself. A heavy misfortune threatens me. It is a strange, terrible and
extraordinary coincidence!"

"What?"

"From that accursed Antioch--whence nothing good has ever come to me--I
have received the saying of an oracle which foretells that, that--why
should I hide it from you--in the middle of the year now about to begin
some dreadful misfortune shall fall upon me, as lightning strikes the
traveller to the earth; and tonight--look here. Here is the house of
Death, here are the planets--but what do you know of such things? Last
night--the night in which once before such terrors were wrought, the
stars confirmed the fatal oracle with as much naked plainness, as much
unmistakable certainty as if they had tongues to shout the evil forecast
in my ear. It is hard to walk on with such a goal in prospect. What may
not the new year bring in its course?"

Hadrian sighed deeply, but Antinous went close up to him, fell on his
knees before him and asked in a tone of childlike humility:

"May I, a poor foolish lad, teach a great and wise man how to enrich his
life with six happy months?" The Emperor smiled, as though he knew what
was coming, but his favorite felt encouraged to proceed.

"Leave the future to the future," he said. "What must come will come, for
the gods themselves have no power against Fate. When evil is approaching
it casts its black shadow before it; you fix your gaze on it and let it
darken the light of day. I saunter dreamily on my way and never see
misfortune till it runs up against me and falls upon me unawares--"

"And so you are spared many a gloomy day," interrupted Hadrian.

"That is just what I would have said."

"And your advice is excellent, for you and for every other loiterer
through the gay fair-time of an idle life," replied the Emperor, "but the
man whose task it is to bear millions in safety and over abysses, must
watch the signs around him, look out far and near, and never dare close
his eyes, even when such terrors loom as it was my fate to see during the
past night."

As he spoke, Phlegon, the Emperor's private secretary, came in with
letters just received from Rome, and approached his master. He bowed low,