"It does not seem to afford him any satisfaction."

"Oh! a handsome lad like my body-slave can find as many substitutes as he
likes."

"But he has not done so. For the present he is still smarting under his
loss."

"How wise! There, some one is knocking again. Just see who ventures--but
to be sure any one has a right to knock, for at Lochias I am not the
Emperor, but a simple private gentleman. Lie down Argus, are you crazy,
old fellow? Why the dog maintains my dignity better than I do, and he
does not seem altogether to like the architect's part I am playing."

Antinous had already raised his hand to lift the handle, when the door
was gently opened from outside, and the steward's slave stood on the
threshold. The old negro presented a lamentable spectacle. The Emperor's
dignified and awe-compelling figure, and his favorite's rich garments
made him feel embarrassed, and the hound's threatening growl filled him
with such terror that he huddled his lean negro-legs together, and, as
far as its length would allow, tried to cover them for protection with
his threadbare tunic.

Hadrian gazed in astonishment at this image of fear, and then asked:

"Well! what do you want, fellow?"

The slave attempted to advance a step or two, but at a loud command from
Hadrian he stood still, and as he looked down at his flat feet, he
ruefully scratched his short-cropped grey hair, some of which had fallen
off and left a bald patch.

"Well," repeated Hadrian, in a tone which was anything rather than
encouraging, as he relaxed his hold on the hound's collar in a somewhat
suspicious manner. The slave's bent knees began to quake, and holding out
his broad palm to the grey-bearded gentleman, who seemed to him
hardly less alarming than the dog, he began to stammer out in
fearfully-mutilated Greek the speech which his master had repeated to him
several times, and which set forth that he had come "into the presence of
the architect, Claudius Venator, of Rome, to announce the visit of his
master, a member of the town-council, a Macedonian, and a Roman citizen,
Keraunus, the son of Ptolemy, steward of the once royal but now imperial
palace at Lochias."

Hadrian unrelentingly allowed the poor wretch to finish his speech,
rubbing his hands with amusement, while the sweat of anguish stood on the
old slave's face, and to prolong the delightful joke, he took good care
not to help the miserable old man when his unaccustomed tongue came to
some i