when a Caesar sits o' nights waiting a turn of fortune
to bring him but a beggarly denarius!"

The scion of the Drusi reddened to his brows, but the bystanders
broke in upon his reply by surging closer around the table,
and shouting, "The Messala! the Messala!"

"Men of the Tiber," Messala continued, wresting a box with the dice
in it from a hand near-by, "who is he most favored of the gods?
A Roman. Who is he lawgiver of the nations? A Roman. Who is he,
by sword right, the universal master?"

The company were of the easily inspired, and the thought was one
to which they were born; in a twinkling they snatched the answer
from him.

"A Roman, a Roman!" they shouted.

"Yet--yet"--he lingered to catch their ears--"yet there is a better
than the best of Rome."

He tossed his patrician head and paused, as if to sting them with
his sneer.

"Hear ye?" he asked. "There is a better than the best of Rome."

"Ay--Hercules!" cried one.

"Bacchus!" yelled a satirist.

"Jove--Jove!" thundered the crowd.

"No," Messala answered, "among men."

"Name him, name him!" they demanded.

"I will," he said, the next lull. "He who to the perfection of
Rome hath added the perfection of the East; who to the arm of
conquest, which is Western, hath also the art needful to the
enjoyment of dominion, which is Eastern."

"Perpol! His best is a Roman, after all," some one shouted;
and there was a great laugh, and long clapping of hands--an
admission that Messala had the advantage.

"In the East" he continued, "we have no gods, only Wine, Women,
and Fortune, and the greatest of them is Fortune; wherefore our
motto, 'Who dareth what I dare?'--fit for the senate, fit for
battle, fittest for him who, seeking the best, challenges the
worst."

His voice dropped into an easy, familiar tone, but without relaxing
the ascendancy he had gained.

"In the great chest up in the citadel I have five talents coin
current in the markets, and here are the receipts for them."

From his tunic he drew a roll of paper, and, flinging it on the
table, continued, amidst breathless silence, every eye having him
in view fixed on his, every ear listening:

"The sum lies there the measure of what I dare. Who of you dares
so much! You are silent. Is it too great? I will strike off one
talent. What! still silent? Come, then, throw me once for these
three talents--only three; for two; for one--one at least--one
for the honor of the river by which you were b