"You can wait till I call you.--You, Adventus! I want the gem with the
marriage of Alexander." The freedman took the gem out of an ebony
casket standing on Caesar's writing-table, and Caracalla, holding the
philosopher by the arm, said, with excited emphasis:

"That gem I inherited from my father, the divine Severus. It was
engraved before that child came into the world. Now you shall see it,
and if you then say that it is an illusion--But why should you doubt it?
Pythagoras and your hero Apollonius both knew whose body their souls had
inhabited in a former existence. Mine--though my mother has laughed at
my belief, and others have dared to do the same-mine, five hundred years
ago, dwelt in the greatest of heroes, Alexander the Macedonian--a right
royal tabernacle!"

He snatched the gem from the chamberlain's hand, and while he devoured
it with his eyes, looking from time to time into Melissa's face, he
eagerly ran on:

"It is she. None but a blind man, a fool, a malignant idiot, could
doubt it! Any who henceforth shall dare mock at my conviction that I was
brought into the world to fulfill the life-span of that great hero, will
learn to rue it! Here--it is but natural--here, in the city he founded
and which bears his name, I have found positive proof that the bond
which unites the son of Philip with the son of Severus is something
more than a mere fancy. This maiden--look at her closely--is the
re-embodiment of the soul of Roxana, as I am of that of her husband.
Even you must see now how naturally it came about that she should uplift
her heart and hands in prayer for me. Her soul, when it once dwelt in
Roxana, was fondly linked with that of the hero; and now, in the bosom
of this simple maiden, it is drawn to the unforgotten fellow-soul which
has found its home in my breast."

He spoke with enthusiastic and firm conviction of the truth of his
strange imagining, as though he were delivering a revelation from the
gods. He bade Philostratus approach and compare the features of Roxana,
as carved in the onyx, with those of the young supplicant.

The fair Persian stood facing Alexander; they were clasping each other's
hands in pledge of marriage, and a winged Hymen fluttered above their
heads with his flaming torch.

Philostratus was, in fact, startled as he looked at the gem, and
expressed his surprise in the liveliest terms, for the features of
Roxana as carved in the cameo, no larger than a man's palm, were, line