standing with their father before a large
table, explaining to him a plan which they had worked out together and
traced on the thin wax surface of a wooden tablet. The young architect's
proposal was to bridge over a deep but narrow gorge, which the beasts of
burden were obliged to avoid by making a wide circuit, and so to make a
new way from the quarries to the sea, which should be shorter by a third
than the old one. The cost of this structure would soon be recouped by
the saving in labor, and with perfect certainty, if only the
transport-ships were laden at Clysma with a profitable return freight of
Alexandrian manufactures, instead of returning empty as they had hitherto
done. Petrus, who could shine as a speaker in the council-meetings, in
private life spoke but little. At each of his son's new projects he
raised his eyes to the speaker's face, as if to see whether the young man
had not lost his wits, while his mouth, only half hidden by his grey
beard, smiled approvingly.

When Antonius began to unfold his plan for remedying the inconvenience of
the ravine that impeded the way, the senator muttered, "Only get feathers
to grow on the slaves, and turn the black ones into ravens and the white
ones into gulls, and then they might fly across. What do not people learn
in the metropolis!"

When he heard the word 'bridge' he stared at the young artist. "The only
question," said he, "is whether Heaven will lend us a rainbow." But when
Polykarp proposed to get some cedar trunks from Syria through his friend
in Alexandria, and when his elder son explained his drawings of the arch
with which he promised to span the gorge and make it strong and safe, he
followed their words with attention; at the same time he knit his
eyebrows as gloomily and looked as stern as if he were listening to some
narrative of crime. Still, he let them speak on to the end, and though at
first he only muttered that it was mere "fancy-work" or "Aye, indeed, if
I were the emperor;" he afterwards asked clear and precise questions, to
which he received positive and well considered answers. Antonius proved
by figures that the profit on the delivery of material for the Caesareum
only would cover more than three quarters of the outlay. Then Polykarp
began to speak and declared that the granite of the Holy Mountain was
finer in color and in larger blocks than that from Syene.

"We work cheaper here than at the Cataract," interrupted Antonius. "And
the transp