f the Gauls, and she had often proved its truth.

But the cool way in which Melissa received the felicitations which the
old woman poured out in honor of the future empress, and her
tear-reddened eyes, seemed at any rate quite comprehensible. The child
was thinking, no doubt, of her handsome Diodoros. Among the splendors of
the palace she would soon forget. And how truly magnificent were the
dress and jewels in which the damsel had appeared in the amphitheatre!

"How they must have hailed her!" thought the old woman when she had
helped Melissa to exchange her dress for a simpler robe, and the girl sat
down to write. "If only the mistress had lived to see this day! And all
the other women must have been bursting with envy. Eternal gods! But,
after all, who knows whether the good luck we envy others is great or
small? Why, even in this house, which the gods have filled to the roof
with gifts and favors, misfortune has crept in through the key hole. Poor
Philip!

"Still, if all goes well with the girl. Things have befallen her such as
rarely come to any one, and yet no more than her due. The fairest and
best will be the greatest and wealthiest in the empire."

And she clutched the amulets and the cross which hung round her arm and
throat, and muttered a hasty prayer for her darling.

Argutis, for his part, did not know what to think of it all. He, if any
one, rejoiced in the good fortune of his master and Melissa; but Heron's
promotion to the rank of praetor had been too sudden, and Heron demeaned
himself too strangely in his purple-bordered toga. It was to be hoped
that this new and unexpected honor had not turned his brain! And the
state in which his master's eldest son remained caused him the greatest
anxiety. Instead of rejoicing in the honors of his family, he had at his
first interview with his father flown into a violent rage; and though he,
Argutis, had not understood what they were saying, he perceived that they
were in vehement altercation, and that Heron had turned away in great
wrath. And then--he remembered it with horror, and could hardly tell what
he had seen to Alexander and Melissa in a reasonable and respectful
manner--Philip had sprung out of bed, had dressed himself without help,
even to his shoes, and scarcely had his father set out in his litter
before Philip had come into the kitchen. He looked like one risen from
the grave, and his voice was hollow as he told the slaves that he meant
to go to th