“You sat up too long, and that has put you out of tune.”

“Out of tune?” muttered Hadrian to himself.  “And what is tune?  That subtle harmony or discord is a condition which masters all the emotions of the soul at once; and not without reason—­to-day my heart is paralyzed with anxiety.”

“Then you have seen evil signs in the heavens?”

“Direful signs!”

“You wise men believe in the stars,” replied Antinous.  “No doubt you are right, but my weak head cannot understand what their regular courses have to do with my inconstant wanderings.”

“Grow gray,” replied the Emperor, “learn to comprehend the universe with your intellect, and not till then speak of these things for not till then will you discern that every atom of things created, and the greatest as well as the least, is in the closest bonds with every other; that all work together, and each depends on all.  All that is or ever will be in nature, all that we men feel, think or do, all is dependent on eternal and immutable causes; and these causes have each their Daimon who interposes between us and the divinity and is symbolized in golden characters on the vault of heaven.  The letters are the stars, whose orbits are as unchanging and everlasting as are the first causes of all that exists or happens.”

“And are you quite sure that you never read wrongly in this great record?” asked Antinous.

“Even I may err,” replied Hadrian.  “But this time I have not deceived myself.  A heavy misfortune threatens me.  It is a strange, terrible and extraordinary coincidence!”

“What?”

“From that accursed Antioch—­whence nothing good has ever come to me—­ I have received the saying of an oracle which foretells that, that—­why should I hide it from you—­in the middle of the year now about to begin some dreadful misfortune shall fall upon me, as lightning strikes the traveller to the earth; and tonight—­look here.  Here is the house of Death, here are the planets—­but what do you know of such things?  Last night—­the night in which once before such terrors were wrought, the stars confirmed the fatal oracle with as much naked plainness, as much unmistakable certainty as if they had tongues to shout the evil forecast in my ear.  It is hard to walk on with such a goal in prospect.  What may not the new year bring in its course?”

Hadrian sighed deeply, but Antinous went close up to him, fell on his knees before him and asked in a tone of childlike humility: 

“May I, a poor foolish lad, teach a great and wise man how to enrich his life with six happy months?” The Emperor smiled, as though he knew what was coming, but his favorite felt encouraged to proceed.

“Leave the future to the future,” he said.  “What must come will come, for the gods themselves have no power against Fate.  When evil is approaching it casts its black shadow before it; you fix your gaze on it and let it darken the light of day.  I saunter dreamily on my way and never see misfortune till it runs up against me and falls upon me unawares—­”