d Publius to come closer to him, and
bowing down to speak into the Roman's ear, he said softly: "Are you in
favor with the queen?" Publius, having said that he was, Serapion, with
an exclamation of satisfaction, began his story.

"You learned this morning how I myself came into this cage, and that my
father was overseer of the temple granaries. While I was wandering abroad
he was deposed from his office, and would probably have died in prison,
if a worthy man had not assisted him to save his honor and his liberty.
All this does not concern you, and I may therefore keep it to myself; but
this man was the father of Klea and Irene, and the enemy by whose
instrumentality my father suffered innocently was the villain Eulaeus.
You know--or perhaps indeed you may not know--that the priests have to
pay a certain tribute for the king's maintenance; you know? To be sure,
you Romans trouble yourselves more about matters of law and
administration than the culture of the arts or the subtleties of thought.
Well, it was my father's duty to pay these customs over to Eulaeus, who
received them; but the beardless effeminate vermin, the glutton--may
every peach he ever ate or ever is to eat turn to poison!--kept back half
of what was delivered to him, and when the accountants found nothing but
empty air in the king's stores where they hoped to find corn and woven
goods, they raised an alarm, which of course came to the ears of the
powerful thief at court before it reached those of my poor father. You
called Egypt a marvellous country, or something like it; and so in truth
it is, not merely on account of the great piles there that you call
Pyramids and such like, but because things happen here which in Rome
would be as impossible as moonshine at mid-day, or a horse with his tail
at the end of his nose! Before a complaint could be laid against Eulaeus
he had accused my father of the peculation, and before the Epistates and
the assessor of the district had even looked at the indictment, their
judgment on the falsely accused man was already recorded, for Eulaeus had
simply bought their verdict just as a man buys a fish or a cabbage in the
market. In olden times the goddess of justice was represented in this
country with her eyes shut, but now she looks round on the world like a
squinting woman who winks at the king with one eye, and glances with the
other at the money in the hand of the accuser or the accused. My poor
father was of course cond