look
from straining over the gemcutting, now beamed with a blissful radiance.
Something wonderful must have happened to him, and, without waiting to be
questioned by the lady, he poured out to her the news that he would have
been overjoyed to have shouted in the market-place for all to hear.

The reception accorded to him at Caesar's table, he declared, had been
flattering beyond all words. The godlike monarch had treated him more
considerately, nay, sometimes with more reverence, than his own sons. The
best dishes had been put before him, and Caracalla had asked all sorts of
questions about his future consort, and, on hearing that Melissa had sent
him greetings, he had raised himself and drunk to him as if he were a
friend.

His table-companions, too, had treated Heron with every distinction.
Immediately on his arrival the monarch had desired them to honor him as
the father of the future empress. They had all agreed with him in
demanding that Zminis the Egyptian should be punished with death, and had
even encouraged him to give the reins to his righteous anger. He, if any
one, was in the habit of being moderate in all things, if only as a good
example to his sons; and he had proved in many a Dionysiac feast that the
god could not easily overpower him. The amount of wine he had drunk
to-day would generally have had no more effect upon him than water, and
yet he had felt now and then as if he were drunken, and the whole festal
hall turned round with him. Even now he would be quite incapable of
walking forward in a given straight line.

With the exclamation, "Such is life!--a few hours ago on the
rowing-bench, and fighting with the brander of the galleys for trying to
brand me with the slave-mark, and now one of the greatest among the
great!" he closed his tale, for a glance through the window showed him
that time pressed.

With strange bashfulness he then gazed at a ring upon his right hand, and
said hesitatingly that his own modesty made the avowal difficult to him;
but the fact was, he was not the same man as when he last left the
ladies. By the grace of the emperor he had been made a praetorian. Caesar
had at first wanted to make him a knight; but he esteemed his Macedonian
descent higher than that class, to which too many freed slaves belonged
for his taste. This he had frankly acknowledged, and the emperor must
have considered his objections valid, for he immediately spoke a few
words to the prefect Macrinus, an