shouted Hadrian in his face, "tried to sell this picture to
this man; in short that you are a simpleton and a scoundrel into the
bargain."

"I--I," gasped Keraunus slapping his hand on his fat chest. "I--a--a--but
you shall repent of these words."

Hadrian laughed coldly and scornfully, but Keraunus sprang on Gabinius
with a wonderful agility for his size, clutched him by the collar of his
chiton and shook the feeble little man as if he were a sapling, shrieking
meanwhile:

"I will choke you with your own lies--serpent, mean viper!"

"Madman!" cried Hadrian "leave hold of the Ligurian or by Sirius you
shall repent it."

"Repent it?" gasped the steward. "It will be your turn to repent when
Caesar comes. Then will come a day of reckoning with false witnesses,
shameless calumniators who disturb peaceful households, while credulous
idiots--"

"Man, man," interrupted Hadrian, not loudly but sternly and ominously,
"you know not to whom you speak."

"Oh I know you--I know you only too well. But I--I--shall I tell you who
I am?"

"You--you are a blockhead," replied the monarch shrugging his shoulders
contemptuously. Then he added calmly, with dignity--almost with
indifference:

"I am Caesar."

At these words the steward's hand dropped from the chiton of the
half-throttled dealer. Speechless and with a glassy stare he gazed in
Hadrian's face for a few seconds. Then he suddenly started, staggered
backwards, uttered a loud choking, gurgling, nameless cry, and fell back
on the floor like a mass of rock shaken from its foundations by an
earthquake. The room shook again with his fall.

Hadrian was startled and when he saw him lying motionless at his feet he
bent over him--less from pity than from a wish to see what was the matter
with him; for he had also dabbled in medicine. Just as he was lifting the
fallen man's hand to feel his pulse Arsinoe rushed into the room. She had
heard the last words of the antagonists with breathless anxiety and her
father's fall and now threw herself on her knees by the side of the
unhappy man, just opposite to Hadrian, and as his distorted and
grey-white face told her what had occurred she broke out in a passionate
cry of anguish. Her brothers and sisters followed at her heels, and when
they saw their favorite sister bewailing herself they followed her
example without knowing at first what Arsinoe was crying for, but soon
with terror and horror at their father lying there stiff and disf