asty and imprudent in their advances and
he had at first received Karnis with considerable reserve; but after a
short interview he had convinced himself that the musician was a man of
unusual culture and superior stamp. The old lady had, from the first,
been predisposed in his favor, for she had read in the stars last night
that the day was to bring her a fortunate meeting. Her wish was law, and
Karnis could not help smiling when she addressed her son, whose hair
had long been grey and who looked fully competent to manage his own
household, as "my child," not hesitating to scold and reprove him. Her
cathedra was a high arm-chair which she never quitted but to be
carried to her observatory on the roof of the house, where she kept her
astrological tablets and manuscripts. The only weakness about her was
in her feet; but strong, and willing arms were always at her disposal
to carry her about--to table, into her sleeping-room, and during the
daytime out to sunny spots in the garden. She was never so happy as when
Helios warmed her back with his rays, for her old blood needed it after
the long night-watches that she still would keep in her observatory.
Even during the hottest noon she would sit in the sun, with a large
green umbrella to shade her keen eyes, and those who desired to speak
with her might find shade as best they could. As she stood, much bent,
but propped on her ivory crutches, eagerly following every word of a
conversation, she looked as though she were prepared at any moment to
spring into the middle of it and interrupt the speaker. She always said
exactly what she meant without reserve or ruth; and throughout her long
life, as the mistress of great wealth, she had always been allowed to
have her own way. She asserted her rights even over her son, though
he was the centre of a web whose threads reached to the furthest
circumference of the known world. The peasants who tilled the earth by
the Upper and Lower Nile, the shepherds who kept their flocks in the
Arabian desert, in Syria, or on the Silphium meads of Cyrenaica, the
wood-cutters of Lebanon and Pontus, the mountaineers of Hispania and
Sardinia, the brokers, merchants, and skippers of every port on the
Mediterranean, were bound by these threads to the villa on the shore of
Mareotis, and felt the tie when the master there--docile as a boy to his
mother's will--tightened or released his hold.

His possessions, even in his youth, had been so vast that their