t, something serious is brewing."

"What happened to you, my Lord?"

"Many things. At the door of the very first tomb that I was about to
enter I found an old black woman who stretched out her hands against us
to keep us out and shrieked out words that sounded horrible."

"Did you understand her?"

"No--who can learn Egyptian."

"Then you do not know what she said?"

"I was to find out--she cried out 'Dead!' and again 'Dead!' and in the
tomb which she was watching there were I know not how many persons
attacked by the plague."

"You saw them?"

"Yes, I had only heard of this disease till then. It is frightful, and
quite answers to the descriptions I had read of it."

"But Caesar!" cried Antinous reproachfully and in alarm.

"When we turned our backs on the tombs," continued Hadrian, paying no
heed to the lad's exclamation, "we were met by an elderly man dressed in
white and a strange-looking maiden. She was lame but of remarkable
beauty."

"And she was going to the sick?"

"Yes, she had brought medicine and food to them."

"But she did not go in among them?" asked Antinous eagerly.

"She did, in spite of my warnings. In her companion I recognized an old
acquaintance."

'An old one?"

"At any rate older than myself. We had met in Athens when we still were
young. At that time he was one of the school of Plato and the most
zealous, nay, perhaps the most gifted of us all."

"How came such a man among the plague-stricken people of Besa? Is he
become a physician?"

"No. But at Athens he sought fervently and eagerly for the truth, and now
he asserts that he has found it."

"Here, among the Egyptians?"

"In Alexandria among the Christians."

"And the lame girl who accompanied the philosopher--does she too believe
in the crucified God?"

"Yes. She is a sick-nurse or something of the kind. Indeed there is
something grand in the ecstatic craze of these people."

"Is it true that they worship an ass and a dove?"

"Nonsense!"

"I did not want to believe it; and at any rate they are kind, and succor
all who suffer, even strangers who do not belong to their sect."

"How do you know?"

"One hears a great deal about them in Alexandria."

"Alas! alas!--I never persecute an imaginary foe, as such I reckon the
creeds and ideas of other men; still, I cannot but ask myself whether it
can add to the prosperity of the state when citizens cease to struggle
against the pressure and necessity of life and cons