wing from the root."

"It has been drooping since yesterday and will die away," replied
Philippus shrugging his shoulders.

But the old man exclaimed: "Water it, Gibbus! the palm-tree must be
watered at once."

"Aye, you have water at hand for that!" retorted the leech, but he added
bitterly as he reached the stairs, "If it were so in all cases!"

"Patience and good purpose will always win," murmured the old man; and
when he was alone he growled on angrily: "Only be rid of that dry old
palm-tree--his past life in all its relations to that patrician hussy
Away with it, into the fire!--But how am I to get her? How can I manage
it?"

He threw himself back in his arm-chair, rubbing his forehead with the
tips of his fingers. He had come to no result when the negro requested
an audience for some visitors. These were the heads of the senate of
Memphis, who had come as a deputation to ask counsel of the old sage.
He, if any one, would find some means of averting or, at any rate,
mitigating the fearful calamity impending over the town and country, and
against which prayer, sacrifice, processions, and pilgrimages had proved
abortive. They were quite resolved to leave no means untried, not even
if heathen magic should be the last resource.

CHAPTER X.

All Katharina's sympathy with Heliodora had died finally in the course
of the past, moonless night. She had secretly accompanied her, with her
maid and an old deaf and dumb stable-slave, to a soothsayer--for there
still were many in Memphis, as well as magicians and alchemists; and
this woman had told the young widow that her line of life led to the
greatest happiness, and that even the wildest wishes of her heart would
find fulfilment. What those wishes were Katharina knew only too well;
the probability of their accomplishment had roused her fierce jealousy
and made her hate Heliodora.

Heliodora had gone to consult the sorceress in a simple but rich dress.
Her peplos was fastened on the shoulder, not by an ordinary gold
pin, but by a button which betrayed her taste for fine jewels, as it
consisted of a sapphire of remarkable size; this had at once caught the
eye of the witch, showing her that she had to deal with a woman of rank
and wealth. She had taken Katharina, who had come very plainly dressed,
for her companion or poor friend, so she had promised her no more than
the removal of certain hindrances, and a happy life at last, with a
husband no longer young and a