ons
of the soul at once; and not without reason--to-day my heart is
paralyzed with anxiety."

"Then you have seen evil signs in the heavens?"

"Direful signs!"

"You wise men believe in the stars," replied Antinous. "No doubt you
are right, but my weak head cannot understand what their regular courses
have to do with my inconstant wanderings."

"Grow gray," replied the Emperor, "learn to comprehend the universe with
your intellect, and not till then speak of these things for not till
then will you discern that every atom of things created, and the
greatest as well as the least, is in the closest bonds with every other;
that all work together, and each depends on all. All that is or ever
will be in nature, all that we men feel, think or do, all is dependent
on eternal and immutable causes; and these causes have each their Daimon
who interposes between us and the divinity and is symbolized in golden
characters on the vault of heaven. The letters are the stars, whose
orbits are as unchanging and everlasting as are the first causes of all
that exists or happens."

"And are you quite sure that you never read wrongly in this great
record?" asked Antinous.

"Even I may err," replied Hadrian. "But this time I have not deceived
myself. A heavy misfortune threatens me. It is a strange, terrible and
extraordinary coincidence!"

"What?"

"From that accursed Antioch--whence nothing good has ever come to me--I
have received the saying of an oracle which foretells that, that--why
should I hide it from you--in the middle of the year now about to begin
some dreadful misfortune shall fall upon me, as lightning strikes the
traveller to the earth; and tonight--look here. Here is the house of
Death, here are the planets--but what do you know of such things? Last
night--the night in which once before such terrors were wrought, the
stars confirmed the fatal oracle with as much naked plainness, as much
unmistakable certainty as if they had tongues to shout the evil forecast
in my ear. It is hard to walk on with such a goal in prospect. What may
not the new year bring in its course?"

Hadrian sighed deeply, but Antinous went close up to him, fell on his
knees before him and asked in a tone of childlike humility:

"May I, a poor foolish lad, teach a great and wise man how to enrich his
life with six happy months?" The Emperor smiled, as though he knew what
was coming, but his favorite felt encouraged to proceed.

"Leave the future