against whom I
raise my voice was my teacher, too, and ere he turned from the path of
right and virtue--under influences which I will not mention here--he
numbered me also, in the presence of many witnesses, among his best
pupils. I was certainly one of the most grateful--I chose his
granddaughter--the truth must be spoken--for my wife. The possession--"

"Possession!" interrupted Dion in a loud, excited tone. "The corpse cast
ashore by the waves might as well boast possession of the sea!"

The dim torchlight was sufficient to reveal Philostratus's pallor to the
bystanders. For a moment the orator seemed to lose his self-control, but
he quickly recovered himself, and shouted: "Fellow-citizens, dear
friends! I was about to make you witnesses of the misery which a woman,
whose wickedness is even greater than her beauty, brought upon an
inexperienced--"

But he went no further; for his hearers--many of whom knew the brilliant,
generous Dion, and Barine, the fair singer at the last Adonis
festival--gave the orator tokens of their indignation, which were all the
more pitiless because of the pleasure they felt in seeing an expert
vanquished by an untrained foe. The wordy war would not have ended so
quickly, however, had not restlessness and alarm taken possession of the
crowd. The shout, "Back! disperse!" ran through the multitude, and
directly after the trampling of hoofs and the commands of the leader of a
troop of Libyan cavalry were heard. The matter at stake was not
sufficiently important to induce the populace to offer an armed force
resistance which might have entailed serious danger. Besides, the
blustering war of tongues had reached a merry close, and loud laughter
blended with the shouts of fear and warning; for the surging throng had
swept with unexpected speed towards the fountain and plunged Philostratus
into the basin. Whether this was due to the wrath of some enemy, or to
mere accident, could not be learned; the vain efforts of the luckless man
to crawl out of the water up the smooth marble were so comical, and his
gestures, after helping hands had dragged him dripping upon the pavement
of the square, were so irresistibly funny, that more laughing than angry
voices were heard, especially when some one cried, "His hands were soiled
by blackening Didymus, so the washing will do him good." "Some wise
physicians flung him into the water," retorted an other; "he needed the
cold application after the blows Dion dea