mother, what a morning, and what an evening. Happiness is
only the threshold to misery."

CHAPTER V.

While Pollux and his mother, who was much grieved, waited for
Euphorion's return, and while Papias was ingratiating himself with the
Emperor by pretending still to believe that Hadrian was nothing more
than Claudius Venator, the architect, Aurelius Verus, nicknamed by the
Alexandrians, "the sham Eros" had lived through strange experiences.

In the afternoon he had visited the Empress, in the hope of persuading
her to look on at the gay doings of the people, even if incognito; but
Sabina was out of spirits, declared herself unwell, and was quite sure
that the noise of the rabble would be the death of her. Having, as she
said, so vivacious a reporter as Verus, she might spare herself from
exposing her own person to the dust and smell of the town, and the
uproar of men. As soon as Lucilla begged her husband to remember his
rank and not to mingle with the excited multitude, at any rate after
dark, the Empress strictly enjoined him to see with his own eyes
everything that could be worth notice in the festival, and more
particularly to give attention to everything that was peculiar to
Alexandria and not to be seen in Rome.

After sunset Verus had first gone to visit the veterans of the Twelfth
Legion who had been in the field with him against the Numidians, and
to whom he gave a dinner at an eating-house, as being his old
fellow-soldiers. For above an hour he sat drinking with the brave old
fellows; then, quitting them, he went to look at the Canopic way
by night, as it was but a few paces thither from the scene of his
hospitality. It was brilliantly lighted with tapers, torches, and
lamps, and the large houses behind the colonnades were gaudy with rich
hangings; only the handsomest and stateliest of them all had no kind of
decoration. This was the abode of the Jew Apollodorus.

In former years the finest hangings had decorated his windows, which had
been as gay with flowers and lamps as those of the other Israelites
who dwelt in the Canopic way, and who were wont to keep the festival
in common with their heathen fellow-citizens as jovially as though they
were no less zealous to do homage to Dionysus. Apollodorus had his own
reasons for keeping aloof on this occasion from all that was connected
with the holiday doings of the heathen. Without dreaming that his
withdrawal could involve him in any danger, he was quie