gives you the rank of eques, and such a
man as you are, the husband of Balbilla and the friend of Caesar may no
doubt by-and-bye find a seat in the Senate. What this generation can
produce in stone and marble, my mausoleum shall bear witness to. Have you
altered the plan of the bridge?"

CHAPTER XXIII.

In Alexandria the news of the nomination of the "sham Eros" to be the
Emperor's successor was hailed with joy, and the citizens availed
themselves gladly of his fresh and favorable opportunity to hold one
festival after another. Titianus took care to provide for the due
performance of the usual acts of grace, and among others he threw open
the prison-gates of Canopus, and the sculptor Pollux was set at liberty.

The hapless artist had grown pale, it is true, in durance vile, but
neither leaner nor enfeebled in body; on the other hand all the vigor of
his intellect, all his bright courage for life and his happy creative
instinct, seemed altogether crushed out of him. His face, as in his dirty
and ragged chiton, he journeyed from Canopus to Alexandria, revealed
neither eager thankfulness for the unexpected boon of liberty, nor
happiness at the prospect of seeing again his own people and Arsinoe.

In the town he went, unintelligently dreaming as he walked, from one
street to another, but he was familiar with every stone of the way, and
his feet found their way to his sister's house. How happy was Diotima,
how her children rejoiced, how impatient was each one to conduct him to
the old folks! How high in the air the Graces frisked and leaped in front
of the new little home to welcome the returned absentee! And Doris, poor
Doris, almost fainted with joyful surprise and her husband had to support
her in his arms when her long vanished son, whom she had never given up
for lost, however, suddenly stood before her and said: "Here am I." How
fondly she kissed and caressed her dear, cruel, restored fugitive. The
singer too loudly expressed his joy alike in verse and in prose, and
fetched his best theatrical dress out of the chest to put it on his son
in the place of his ragged chiton.

A mighty torrent of curses and execrations flowed from the old man's lips
as Pollux told his story. The sculptor found it difficult to bring it to
an end, for his father interrupted him at every word, and all the while
he was talking his mother forced him to eat and drink incessantly, even
when he could no more. After he had assured her tha