"The youngest pearl in Alexandria's crown of beauties!" while Bion,
Alexander's now gray-haired master, clapped the youth on the arm,
and added: "Yes, indeed, see what the little thing has grown! Do
you remember, pretty one, how you once--how many years ago, I
wonder?--spotted your little white garments all over with red dots! I
can see you now, your tiny finger plunged into the pot of paint, and
then carefully printing off the round pattern all over the white linen.
Why, the little painter has become a Hebe, a Charis, or, better still, a
sweetly dreaming Psyche."

"Ay, ay!" said Glaukias again. "My worthy landlord has a charming model.
He has not far to seek for a head for his best gems. His son, a Helios,
or the great Macedonian whose name he bears; his daughter--you are
right, Bion--the maid beloved of Eros. Now, if you can make verses, my
young friend of the Muses, give us an epigram in a line or two which we
may bear in mind as a compliment to our imperial visitor."

"But not here--not in the burial-ground," Melissa urged once more.

Among Glaukias's companions was Argeios, a vain and handsome young poet,
with scented locks betraying him from afar, who was fain to display the
promptness of his poetical powers; and, even while the elder artist
was speaking, he had run Alexander's satirical remarks into the mold
of rhythm. Not to save his life could he have suppressed the hastily
conceived distich, or have let slip such a justifiable claim to
applause. So, without heeding Melissa's remonstrance, he flung his
sky-blue mantle about him in fresh folds, and declaimed with comical
emphasis:

"Down to earth did the god cast his son: but with mightier hand
Through it, to Hades, Caesar flung his brother the dwarf."

The versifier was rewarded by a shout of laughter, and, spurred by the
approval of his friends, he declared he had hit on the mode to which to
sing his lines, as he did in a fine, full voice.

But there was another poet, Mentor, also of the party, and as he
could not be happy under his rival's triumph, he exclaimed: "The great
dyer--for you know he uses blood instead of the Tyrian shell--has
nothing of Father Zeus about him that I can see, but far more of the
great Alexander, whose mausoleum he is to visit to-morrow. And if you
would like to know wherein the son of Severus resembles the giant of
Macedon, you shall hear."

He thrummed his thyrsus as though he struck the strings of a lyre, and,
havin