he show than his younger but less
excitable favorite, pushed into the front rank, and as Antinous was
trying to follow him, a Greek boy, whom he had shoved aside, snatched his
mask from his face, threw himself on the ground, and slipped nimbly off
with his booty. When Hadrian looked round for the Bithyman, the ship-in
which the prefect was standing between the images of the Emperor and
Empress, while Julia, Balbilla, and her companion, and other Roman lords
and ladies were sitting in it--had come quite near to them. His sharp eye
had recognized them all, and fearing that the lad's uncovered face would
betray them he cried out:

"Turn round and get into the crowd again." The favorite immediately
obeyed, and only too glad to escape from the crowd, which was a thing he
detested, he sat down on a bench close to the Paneum, and looked dreamily
at the ground while he thought of Selene and the nosegay he had sent her,
neither seeing nor hearing anything of what was going on around him.

When the gaudy ship left the gardens of the Paneum and turned into the
Canopic way, the crowd pursued it in a dense mass, hallooing and
shouting. Like a torrent suddenly swelled by a storm it rushed on,
surging and growing at each moment, and carrying with it even those who
tried to resist its force. Thus even Hadrian and Pollux were forced to
follow in its wake, and it was not till they found themselves in the
broad Canopic way that they were able to come to a stand-still. The broad
roadway of this famous street was bordered on each side by a long vista
of colonnade, and it extended from one end of the city to the other.
There were hundreds of the Corinthian columns which supported the roof
that covered the footway, and near to one of these the Emperor and Pollux
succeeded at last in effecting a halt and taking breath.

Hadrian's first thought was for his favorite, and being averse to
venturing himself once more to mix with the crowd, he begged the sculptor
to go and seek him and conduct him safely.

"Will you wait for me here?" asked Pollux.

"I have known a pleasanter halting place," sighed the Emperor.

"So have I," answered the artist. "But that tall door there, wreathed
round with boughs of poplar and ivy, leads into a cook-shop where the
gods themselves might be content to find themselves."

"Then I will wait there."

"But I warn you to eat as much as you can, for the Olympian table' as
kept by Lykortas, the Corinthian, is the de