iged to avoid by making a wide circuit, and so to make a
new way from the quarries to the sea, which should be shorter by a third
than the old one. The cost of this structure would soon be recouped
by the saving in labor, and with perfect certainty, if only the
transport-ships were laden at Clysma with a profitable return freight
of Alexandrian manufactures, instead of returning empty as they
had hitherto done. Petrus, who could shine as a speaker in the
council-meetings, in private life spoke but little. At each of his son's
new projects he raised his eyes to the speaker's face, as if to see
whether the young man had not lost his wits, while his mouth, only half
hidden by his grey beard, smiled approvingly.

When Antonius began to unfold his plan for remedying the inconvenience
of the ravine that impeded the way, the senator muttered, "Only get
feathers to grow on the slaves, and turn the black ones into ravens and
the white ones into gulls, and then they might fly across. What do not
people learn in the metropolis!"

When he heard the word 'bridge' he stared at the young artist. "The only
question," said he, "is whether Heaven will lend us a rainbow." But when
Polykarp proposed to get some cedar trunks from Syria through his friend
in Alexandria, and when his elder son explained his drawings of the arch
with which he promised to span the gorge and make it strong and safe,
he followed their words with attention; at the same time he knit his
eyebrows as gloomily and looked as stern as if he were listening to some
narrative of crime. Still, he let them speak on to the end, and though
at first he only muttered that it was mere "fancy-work" or "Aye, indeed,
if I were the emperor;" he afterwards asked clear and precise questions,
to which he received positive and well considered answers. Antonius
proved by figures that the profit on the delivery of material for the
Caesareum only would cover more than three quarters of the outlay.
Then Polykarp began to speak and declared that the granite of the Holy
Mountain was finer in color and in larger blocks than that from Syene.

"We work cheaper here than at the Cataract," interrupted Antonius. "And
the transport of the blocks will not come too dear when we have the
bridge and command the road to the sea, and avail ourselves of the
canal of Trajan, which joins the Nile to the Red Sea, and which in a few
months will again be navigable."

"And if my lions are a success," added Pol