nsuperable difficulty. When, at length, the negro had finished the
pompous announcement, Hadrian said, kindly:

"Tell your master he may come in."

Scarcely had the slave left the room, when the sovereign, turning to his
favorite, exclaimed:

"This is a delicious joke! What will the Jupiter be like, when the eagle
is such a bird as this!"

Keraunus was not long to wait for. While pacing up and down the passage
outside the Emperor's room, his bad humor had risen considerably, for he
took it as a slight on the part of the architect, that he should allow
him--whose birth and dignities he would have learnt from his slave--to
wait several minutes, each of which seemed to him a quarter of an hour.
His expectation too, that the Roman would come to conduct him in person
into his apartment was by no means fulfilled, for the slave's message was
briefly--"He may come in."

"Did he say may? Did he not say 'please to come in, or have the goodness
to come in?'" asked the steward.

"He may come in--was what he said," replied the slave.

Keraunus grunted out, "Well!" set his gold circlet straight on his head
which he held very upright, crossed his arms over his broad chest with a
sigh, and ordered the black man:

"Open the door."

The steward crossed the threshold with much dignity: then, not to commit
any breach of courtesy, he bowed low, and was about to begin to utter his
reprimand in cutting terms, when a glance at the Emperor and at the
splendid decoration which the room had undergone since the day previous,
not to mention the very unpleasant growling of the big dog, prompted him
to strike a milder string. His slave had followed him and had sought a
safe corner near the door, between the wall of the room and a couch, but
he himself, conquering his alarm at the dog, went forward some distance
into the room. The Emperor had seated himself on the window-sill; he
pressed his foot lightly on the head of the dog, and gazed at Keraunus as
at some remarkable curiosity. His eye thus met that of the steward and
made him clearly understand that he had to do with a greater personage
than he had expected. There was something imposing in the person of the
man who sat before him; for this very reason, however, his pride stood on
tiptoe, and he asked in a tone of swaggering dignity, though not so
sharply and abruptly as he had intended.

"Am I standing before the new visitor to Lochias, the architect Claudius
Venator of Rome?"

"You