to you the
life of the people who once spoke in this forum, bathed in yonder baths,
applauded in the theatre nineteen hundred years ago! Let us follow this
street which leads toward the Temple of Isis, that Temple in which the
Egyptian goddess was worshipped by such as pretended to believe in her
mysterious powers. I say _pretended_, because it was the fashion then to
consult her oracles--a fashion as insulting as it was popular."

By this time we had passed out of the Temple of Mercury and were making
our way along the time-worn pavement toward the building of which he
spoke. The sun was sinking in the west, and already long shadows were
drawing across the silent streets, intensifying the ghostliness of the
long-deserted city. Reaching the Temple, we entered and looked about us.

"See how its grandeur has departed from it," said Pharos, with a note of
sadness in his voice that made me turn and gaze at him in surprise.
"Time was when this was the most beautiful temple in the city, when
every day her courts were thronged with worshippers, when her oracles
boasted a reputation that reached even to mighty Rome. On this spot
stood the statue of the goddess herself. There that of her son, the god
Horus. Here was the purgatorium, and there the bronze figure of the bull
god Apis. Can you not picture the crowd of eager faces beyond the rails,
the white-robed priests, and the sacrifice being offered up on yonder
altar amid the perfumes of frankincense and myrrh? Where, Mr. Forrester,
are these priests now? The crowd of worshippers, the statues?
Gone--gone--dust and ashes, these nineteen hundred years. Come, we have
lingered here long enough, let us go further."

Leaving the Temple we made our way into the Stabian Street, passed the
Temple of AEsculapius, and did not stop until we had reached the house of
Tullus Agrippa. Into this Pharos led me.

"O Tullus Agrippa!" he cried, as if apostrophizing the dead man, "across
the sea of time, I, Pharos the Egyptian, salute thee! Great was thy
wealth and endless thy resources. Greedy of honour and praise wast thou,
and this house was the apex of thy vanity. Here is that same triclinium
where thy guests were wont to assemble when thou didst invite them to
thy banquets. Here the room in which thou didst condemn thine only son
to perpetual banishment. In those days, when the sun was warm and the
table was laden with the banquet, and friends crowded about thee and
praised the beauty of th