ice to her, I will-for your
sake. Tell me now what you know of her and what you wish me to do."

The recluse nodded assent and beckoned Publius to come closer to him,
and bowing down to speak into the Roman's ear, he said softly: "Are you
in favor with the queen?" Publius, having said that he was, Serapion,
with an exclamation of satisfaction, began his story.

"You learned this morning how I myself came into this cage, and that
my father was overseer of the temple granaries. While I was wandering
abroad he was deposed from his office, and would probably have died in
prison, if a worthy man had not assisted him to save his honor and his
liberty. All this does not concern you, and I may therefore keep it to
myself; but this man was the father of Klea and Irene, and the enemy
by whose instrumentality my father suffered innocently was the villain
Eulaeus. You know--or perhaps indeed you may not know--that the priests
have to pay a certain tribute for the king's maintenance; you know? To
be sure, you Romans trouble yourselves more about matters of law
and administration than the culture of the arts or the subtleties of
thought. Well, it was my father's duty to pay these customs over to
Eulaeus, who received them; but the beardless effeminate vermin,
the glutton--may every peach he ever ate or ever is to eat turn to
poison!--kept back half of what was delivered to him, and when the
accountants found nothing but empty air in the king's stores where
they hoped to find corn and woven goods, they raised an alarm, which of
course came to the ears of the powerful thief at court before it reached
those of my poor father. You called Egypt a marvellous country, or
something like it; and so in truth it is, not merely on account of the
great piles there that you call Pyramids and such like, but because
things happen here which in Rome would be as impossible as moonshine
at mid-day, or a horse with his tail at the end of his nose! Before a
complaint could be laid against Eulaeus he had accused my father of the
peculation, and before the Epistates and the assessor of the district
had even looked at the indictment, their judgment on the falsely accused
man was already recorded, for Eulaeus had simply bought their verdict
just as a man buys a fish or a cabbage in the market. In olden times the
goddess of justice was represented in this country with her eyes shut,
but now she looks round on the world like a squinting woman who winks
at the