wkwardness had vanished, and wherever he might
go--even in the Capital, he was certain to be one of the first to attract
observation and approval.

And what had he not known in his city experience? The events of half a
century had followed each other with intoxicating rapidity in the course
of the thirty months he had spent there. The greater the excitement, the
greater the pleasure was the watchword of his time; and though he had
rioted and revelled on the shores of the Bosphorus if ever man did, still
the pleasures of feasting and of love, or of racing with his own
victorious horses--all of which he had enjoyed there to the full--were as
child's play compared with the nervous tension to which he had been
strung by the appalling events he had witnessed on all sides. How petty
was the excitement of an Alexandrian horse-race! Whether Timon or Ptolemy
or he himself should win--what did it matter? It was a fine thing no
doubt to carry off the crown in the circus at Byzantium, but there were
other and soul-stirring crises there beyond those which were bound up
with horses or chariots. There a throne was the prize, and might cost the
blood and life of thousands!--What did a man bring home from the churches
in the Nile valley? But if he crossed the threshold of St. Sophia's in
Constantinople he often might have his blood curdled, or bring home--what
matter?--bleeding wounds, or even be carried home--a corpse.

Three times had he seen the throne change masters. An emperor and an
empress had been stripped of the purple and mutilated before his eyes.

Aye, then and there he had had real and intense excitement to thrill him
to the marrow and quick. As for the rest! Well, yes, he had had more
trivial pleasures too. He had not been received as other Egyptians were:
half-educated philosophers--who called themselves Sages and assumed a
mystic and pompously solemn demeanor, Astrologers, Rhetoricians,
poverty-stricken but witty and venemous satirists, physicians making a
display of the learning of their forefathers, fanatical
theologians--always ready to avail themselves of other weapons than
reason and dogma in their bitter contests over articles of faith, hermits
and recluses--as foul in mind as they were dirty in their persons,
corn-merchants and usurers with whom it was dangerous to conclude a
bargain without witnesses. Orion was none of these. As the handsome,
genial, and original-minded son of the rich and noble Governor, Mukauk