lt and taking breath.

Hadrian's first thought was for his favorite, and being averse to
venturing himself once more to mix with the crowd, he begged the
sculptor to go and seek him and conduct him safely.

"Will you wait for me here?" asked Pollux.

"I have known a pleasanter halting place," sighed the Emperor.

"So have I," answered the artist. "But that tall door there, wreathed
round with boughs of poplar and ivy, leads into a cook-shop where the
gods themselves might be content to find themselves."

"Then I will wait there."

"But I warn you to eat as much as you can, for the Olympian table' as
kept by Lykortas, the Corinthian, is the dearest eating-house in the
whole city. None but the richest are his guests."

"Very good," laughed Hadrian. "Only find my assistant a new mask and
bring him back to me. It will not ruin me quite, even if I pay for
a supper for all three of us, and on a holiday one expects to spend
something."

"I hope you may not live to repent," retorted Pollux. "But a long fellow
like me is a good trencherman, and can do his part with the wine-jar."

"Only show me what you can do," cried Hadrian after him as Pollux
hurried off. "I owe you a supper at any rate, for that cabbage stew of
your mother's."

While Pollux went to seek the Bithyman in the vicinity of the Paneum,
the Emperor entered the eating house, which the skill of the cook had
made the most frequented and fashionable in Alexandria. The place in
which most of the customers of the house dined, consisted of a large
open hall, surrounded by arcades which were roofed in on three of
its sides and closed by a wall on its fourth; in these arcades stood
couches, on which the guests reclined singly, or in couples, or in
larger groups, and ordered the dishes and liquors which the serving
slaves, pretty boys with curling hair and hand some dresses, placed
before them on low tables. Here all was noise and bustle; at one
table an epicure devoted himself silently to the enjoyment of some
carefully-prepared delicacy, at another a large circle of men seemed to
be talking more eagerly than they either eat or drank, and from several
of the smaller rooms behind the wall at the back of the hall came sounds
of music and song, and the bold laughter of men and women.

The Emperor asked for a private room, but they were all occupied, and
he was requested to wait a little while, for that one of the adjoining.
rooms would very soon be vacant. He had