! yes, tell me about the City of the Popes."

_Apollonius_--"----A drunken man accosted us who sang with a sweet
voice. It was an epithalamium of Nero; and he had the power of causing
the death of anyone who heard him with indifference. He carried on his
back in a box a string taken from the cithara of the Emperor. I shrugged
my shoulders. He threw mud in our faces. Then I unfastened my girdle and
placed it in his hands."

_Damis_--"In this instance you were quite wrong!"

_Apollonius_--"The Emperor, during the night, made me call at his
residence. He played at ossicles with Sporus, leaning with his left arm
on a table of agate. He turned round, and, knitting his fair brows: 'Why
are you not afraid of me?' he asked. 'Because the God who made you
terrible has made me intrepid,' I replied."

_Antony_, to himself--"Something unaccountable fills me with fear."

Silence.

_Damis_ resumes, in a shrill voice--"All Asia, moreover, could tell
you ..."

_Antony_, starting up--"I am sick. Leave me!"

_Damis_--"Listen now. At Ephesus, he witnessed the death of Domitian,
who was at Rome."

_Antony_ making an effort to laugh--"Is this possible?"

_Damis_--"Yes, at the theatre, in broad daylight, on the fourteenth of
the Kalends of October, he suddenly exclaimed: 'They are murdering
Caesar!' and he added, every now and then, 'He rolls on the ground! Oh!
how he struggles! He gets up again; he attempts to fly; the gates are
shut. Ah! it is finished. He is dead!' And that very day, in fact, Titus
Flavius Domitianus was assassinated, as you are aware."

_Antony_--"Without the aid of the Devil ... No doubt ..."

_Apollonius_--"He wished to put me to death, this Domitian. Damis fled
by my direction, and I remained alone in my prison."

_Damis_--"It was a terrible bit of daring, I must confess!"

_Apollonius_--"About the fifth hour, the soldiers led me to the
tribunal. I had my speech quite ready, which I kept under my cloak."

_Damis_--"The rest of us were on the bank of Puzzoli! We saw you die; we
wept; when, towards the sixth hour, all at once, you appeared, and said
to us, 'It is I.'"

_Antony_, aside--"Just like Him!"

_Damis_, very loudly--"Absolutely!"

_Antony_--"Oh, no! you are lying, are you not? You are lying!"

_Apollonius_--"He came down from Heaven--I ascend there, thanks to my
virtue, which has raised me even to the height of the Most High!"

_Damis_--"Tyana, his native city, has erected a temple with p