e same frenzied and terror-stricken haste as
before, among the revellers, crying: "It is the end-all is over! The
world is falling asunder! Fire is come down from heaven! The earth is in
flames already--I saw it with my own eyes! I have come down from the
roof. . . .

"Father! Where is my father?"

At this news the company started up in fresh alarm, Pappus, the
mathematician, cried out: "The conflagration has begun! Flame and fire
are falling from the skies!"

"Lost-lost!" wailed Eunapius; while Porphyrius hastily felt in the folds
of his purple garment, took out a small crystal phial and went, pale but
calm, up to the high-priest. He laid his hand on the arm of the friend
whom he had looked up to all his life with affectionate admiration, and
said with an expression of tender regret:

"Farewell. We have often disputed over the death of Cato--you
disapproving and I approving it. Now I follow his example. Look--there is
enough for us both."

He hastily put the phial to his mouth, and part of the liquid had passed
his lips before Olympius understood the situation and seized his arm. The
effect of the deadly fluid was instantly manifest; but Porphyrius had
hardly lost consciousness when Apuleius had rushed to his side. The
physician had succumbed to the universal panic and resigned himself
doggedly to Fate; but as soon as an appeal was made to his medical skill
and he heard a cry for help, he had thrown off the wrapper from his head
and hastened to the merchant's side to combat the effects of the poison,
as clear-headed and decisive as in his best hours by the bed of sickness
or in the lecture-room.

When the very backbone of the soul seems to be broken, a sense of duty is
the one and last thing that holds it together and keeps it upright; and
nature has implanted in us such a strong and instinctive regard for
life--which we are so apt to contemn--that even within a few paces of the
grave we cherish and foster it as carefully as in its prime, when the end
seems still remote.

The merchant's desperate deed had been done under the very eyes of
Orpheus, and the newer horror so completely overshadowed the older, that
he hastened unbidden to help the physician lay the unconscious man on the
nearest couch; but then he went off again in search of his parents.
Olympius, however, who at the sight of his friend's weakness had suddenly
comprehended how much depended, in these last hours, on his own resolute
demeanor, detaine