rnt from her that the Moschosphragist
had just told them that the troops had been placed all round the Serapeum
and that the Emperor had commanded the Prefect of the East to lay violent
hands on the temple of the King of gods. Today or to-morrow the crime was
to be perpetrated. They had been warned to pray and repent of their sins,
for at the moment when the holiest sanctuary on earth should fall the
whole world would crumble into nothingness. The entrails of the beast
sacrificed by Damia had been black as though scorched, and a terrific
groan had been heard from the god himself in the great shrine; the
pillars of the great hypostyle had trembled and the three heads of
Cerberus, lying at the feet of Serapis; had opened their jaws.

Gorgo listened in silence to the old woman's story; and all she said in
reply was: "Let them wail."

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Pretended to see nothing in the old woman's taunts
Very hard to imagine nothingness

SERAPIS

By Georg Ebers

Volume 4.

CHAPTER XVI.

The day had flown swiftly for Dada under the roof of Medius; there were
costumes and scenery in wonderful variety for her to look over; the
children were bright and friendly, and she had enjoyed playing with them,
for all her little tricks and rhymes, which Papias was familiar with by
this time, were to them new and delightful. It amused her, too, to see
what the domestic difficulties were of which the singer had described
himself as being a victim.

Medius was one of those men who buy everything that strikes them as
cheap--for instance, that very morning, at Kibotus he had stood to watch
a fish auction and had bought a whole tub-full of pickled fish for "a
mere trifle;" but when, presently, the cargo was delivered, his wife flew
into a great rage, which she vented first on the innocent lad who brought
the fish, and then on the less innocent purchaser. They would not get to
the bottom of the barrel and eat the last herring, she asserted, till
they were a century old. Medius, while he disputed so monstrous a
statement, vehemently declared that such wholesome and nutritious food as
those fish was undoubtedly calculated to prolong the lives of the whole
family to an exceptionally great age.

This discussion, which was not at all by way of a jest, amused Dada far
more than the tablets, cylinders and cones covered with numbers and
cabalistic signs, to which Medius tried to direct her attention. She