ently. There must be something in my singing that
carries the hearers away. My Alexandrian hosts, however, are overready to
show me what they think. It did not escape me, and I shall add it to the
rest."

Then he invited Melissa to make a return for his song by singing Sappho's
Ode to Aphrodite. Pale, and as if obeying some strange compulsion, she
seated herself at the instrument, and the prelude sounded clear and
tuneful from her skillful fingers.

"Beautiful! Worthy of Mesomedes!" cried Caracalla, but Melissa could not
sing, for at the first note her voice was broken by stormy sobs.

"The power of the goddess whom she meant to extol!" said Philostratus,
pointing to her; and the tearful, beseeching look with which she met the
emperor's gaze while she begged him in low tones--"Not now! I can not do
it to-day!"--confirmed Caracalla in his opinion that the passion he had
awakened in the maiden was in no way inferior to his own-perhaps even
greater. He relieved his full heart by whispering to Melissa a
passionate, "I love you," and, desiring to show her by a favor how kindly
he felt toward her, added: "I will not let your fellow-citizens wait
outside any longer--Adventus! The deputation from the Circus!"

The chamberlain withdrew at once, and the emperor throwing himself back
on the throne, continued, with a sigh:

"I wonder how any of these rich tradesmen would like to undertake what I
have already gone through this day. First, the bath; then, while I
rested, Macrinus's report; after that, the inspection of the sacrifices;
then a review of the troops, with a gracious word to every one. Scarcely
returned, I had to receive the ambassadors from my mother, and then came
the troublesome affair with Vindex. Then the dispatches from Rome
arrived, the letters to be examined, and each one to be decided on and
signed. Finally the settling of accounts with the idiologos, who, as
high-priest of my choosing, has to collect the tribute from all the
temples in Egypt. . . . Next I gave audience to several people--to your
father among the rest. He is strange, but a thorough man, and a true
Macedonian of the old stock. He repelled both greeting and presents, but
he longed to be revenged--heavily and bloodily--on Zminis, who denounced
him and brought him to the galleys. . . . How the old fellow must have
raged and stormed when he was a prisoner! I treated the droll old
gray-beard like my father. The giant pleases me, and what skillful