rted he
betrayed how willingly he carried out this order of his master's.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Possess little and require nothing

A THORNY PATH

By Georg Ebers

Volume 11.

CHAPTER XXX.

Scarcely had Macrinus closed the door behind him, when Caracalla threw
himself exhausted on the throne, and ordered wine to brought.

The gloomy gaze he bent upon the ground was not affected this time. The
physician noted with anxiety how his master's breast heaved and his
eyelids quivered; but when he offered Caesar a soothing potion, he waved
him away, and commanded him to cease from troubling him.

For all that, he listened a little later to the legate, who brought the
news that the youths of the city assembled on the race-course were
beginning to be impatient. They were singing and applauding boisterously,
and the songs they so loudly insisted on having repeated would certainly
not contain matter flattering to the Romans.

"Leave them alone," answered Caesar, roughly. "Every line is aimed at me
and no other. But the condemned are always allowed their favorite meal
before the last journey. The food they love is venomous satire. Let them
enjoy it to the full once more!--Is it far to Zminis's prison?"

The reply was in the negative; and as Caracalla exclaimed, "So much the
better!" a significant smile played on his lips.

The high-priest of Serapis had looked on in much distress of mind. He, as
the head of the Museum, had set high hopes on the youth who had come to
such a terrible end. If Caesar should carry his threats into execution,
there would be an end to that celebrated home of learning which, in his
opinion, bore such noble fruits of study. And what could Caracalla mean
by his dark saying that the sport and mockery of those youths below was
their last meal? The worst might indeed be expected from the fearful
tyrant who was at once so deeply wounded and so grievously offended; and
the high-priest had already sent messengers--Greeks of good credit--to
warn the insurgent youths in the stadium. But, as the chief minister of
the divinity, he also esteemed it his duty, at any risk to himself, to
warn the despot, whom he saw on the verge of being carried away to deeds
of unparalleled horror. He thought the time had come, when Caracalla
looked up from the brooding reverie into which he had again sunk, and
with an ominous scowl asked Timotheus whether his wife, under whose
protection Melis