them; and it was not till a tremendous
clap of thunder shook the very walls that several were silent and looked
up with increasing alarm. The moment's pause was seized on to begin the
fight. Caesar bit his lip in powerless fury, and his hatred of the
towns-people, who had thus so plainly given him to understand their
sentiments, was rising from one minute to the next. He felt it a real
misfortune that he was unable to punish on the spot the insult thus
offered him; swelling with rage, he remembered a speech made by Caligula,
and wished the town had but one head, that he might sever it from the
body. The blood throbbed so fiercely in his temples, and there was such a
singing in his ears, that for some little time he neither saw nor heard
what was going on. This terrible agitation might cost him yet some hours
of great suffering. But he need no longer dread them so much; for there
sat the living remedy which he believed he had secured by the strongest
possible ties.

How fair she was! And, as he looked round once more at Melissa, he
observed that her eye was turned on him with evident anxiety. At this a
light seemed to dawn in his clouded soul, and he was once more conscious
of the love which had blossomed in his heart. But it would never do to
make her who had wrought the miracle so soon the confidante of his
hatred. He had seen her angry, had seen her weep, and had seen her smile;
and within the next few days, which were to make him a happy man instead
of a tortured victim, he longed only to see her great eyes sparkle and
her lips overflow with words of love, joy, and gratitude. His score with
the Alexandrians must be settled later, and it was in his power to make
them atone with their blood and bitterly rue the deeds of this night.

He passed his hand over his furrowed brow, as though to wake himself from
a bad dream; nay, he even found a smile when next his eyes met hers; and
those spectators to whom his aspect seemed more absorbing than the
horrible slaughter in the arena, looked at each other in amazement, for
the indifference or the dissimulation, whichever it might be, with which
Caesar regarded this unequaled scene of bloodshed, seemed to them quite
incredible.

Never, since his very first visit to a circus, had Caracalla left
unnoticed for so long a time the progress of such a battle as this.
However, nothing very remarkable had so far occurred, for the actual
seizure of the camp had but just begun with the ma