most unbearable fate-to appear ridiculous before so many.

Caracalla allowed him to go, but, as he stepped across the threshold, he
called after him: "Tomorrow, then, with your sister, after the bath! Tell
her the stars and the spirits are propitious to our union."

Caesar then beckoned to the chief of the nightwatch, and, having laid the
blame of the unpleasant occurrences in the Circus on his carelessness,
cut the frightened officer short when he proposed to take every one
prisoner whom the lictors had marked among the noisy.

"Not yet! On no account to-morrow," Caracalla ordered. "Mark each one
carefully. Keep your eyes open at the next performance. Put down the
names of the disaffected. Take care that the rope hangs about the neck of
the guilty. The time to draw it tight will come presently. When they
think themselves safe, the cowardly show their true faces. Wait till I
give the signal--certainly not in the next few days; then seize upon
them, and let none escape!"

Caesar had given these orders with smiling lips. He wanted first to make
Melissa his, and, like a shepherd, to revel with her in the sweetness of
their love. No moment of this time should be darkened for him by the
tears and prayers of his bride. When she should hear, later on, of her
husband's bloody vengeance upon his enemies, she would have to accept it
as an accomplished fact; and means, no doubt, would be found to soothe
her indignation.

Those who after the insulting occurrences in the Circus had expected to
see Caesar raging and storming, were hurried from one surprise to
another; for even after his conversation with the night-watch he looked
cheerful and contented, and exclaimed: "It is long since you have seen me
thus! My own mirror will ask itself if it has not changed owners. It is
to be hoped it may have cause to accustom itself to reflect me as a happy
man as often as I look in it. The two highest joys of life are before me,
and I know not what would be left for me to desire if only Philostratus
were here to share the coming days with me."

The grave senator Cassius Dio here stepped forward and observed that
there were advantages in their amiable friend's withdrawal from the
turmoil of court life. His Life of Apollonius, to which all the world was
looking forward, would come all the sooner to a close.

"If only that I might talk to him of the man of Tyana," cried the
emperor, "I wish his biographer were here to-day. To possess little