fingers. He had come to no result when the negro requested an
audience for some visitors. These were the heads of the senate of
Memphis, who had come as a deputation to ask counsel of the old sage. He,
if any one, would find some means of averting or, at any rate, mitigating
the fearful calamity impending over the town and country, and against
which prayer, sacrifice, processions, and pilgrimages had proved
abortive. They were quite resolved to leave no means untried, not even if
heathen magic should be the last resource.

CHAPTER X.

All Katharina's sympathy with Heliodora had died finally in the course of
the past, moonless night. She had secretly accompanied her, with her maid
and an old deaf and dumb stable-slave, to a soothsayer--for there still
were many in Memphis, as well as magicians and alchemists; and this woman
had told the young widow that her line of life led to the greatest
happiness, and that even the wildest wishes of her heart would find
fulfilment. What those wishes were Katharina knew only too well; the
probability of their accomplishment had roused her fierce jealousy and
made her hate Heliodora.

Heliodora had gone to consult the sorceress in a simple but rich dress.
Her peplos was fastened on the shoulder, not by an ordinary gold pin, but
by a button which betrayed her taste for fine jewels, as it consisted of
a sapphire of remarkable size; this had at once caught the eye of the
witch, showing her that she had to deal with a woman of rank and wealth.
She had taken Katharina, who had come very plainly dressed, for her
companion or poor friend, so she had promised her no more than the
removal of certain hindrances, and a happy life at last, with a husband
no longer young and a large family of children.

The woman's business was evidently a paying one; the interior of her
house was conspicuously superior to the wretched hovels which surrounded
it, in the poorest and most squalid part of the town. Outside, indeed, it
differed little from its neighbors; in fact; it was intentionally
neglected, to mislead the authorities, for witchcraft and the practice of
magic arts were under the penalty of death. But the fittings of the
roofless centre-chamber in which she was wont to perform her incantations
and divinations argued no small outlay. On the walls were hangings with
occult figures; the pillars were painted with weird and grewsome
pictures; crucibles and cauldrons of various sizes were simmerin