Hadrian was startled and when he saw him lying motionless at his feet he bent over him—­less from pity than from a wish to see what was the matter with him; for he had also dabbled in medicine.  Just as he was lifting the fallen man’s hand to feel his pulse Arsinoe rushed into the room.  She had heard the last words of the antagonists with breathless anxiety and her father’s fall and now threw herself on her knees by the side of the unhappy man, just opposite to Hadrian, and as his distorted and grey-white face told her what had occurred she broke out in a passionate cry of anguish.  Her brothers and sisters followed at her heels, and when they saw their favorite sister bewailing herself they followed her example without knowing at first what Arsinoe was crying for, but soon with terror and horror at their father lying there stiff and disfigured.  The Emperor, who had never had either son or daughter of his own, found nothing so intolerable as the presence of crying children.  However he endured the wailing and whimpering that surrounded him till he had ascertained the condition of the man lying on the ground before him.

“He is dead,” he said in a few minutes.  “Cover his face, Master.”

Arsinoe and the children broke out afresh, and Hadrian glanced down at them with annoyance.  When his eye fell on Arsinoe, whose costly robe, merely pinned and slightly stitched together had come undone with the vehemence of her movements and were hanging as flapping rags in tumbled disorder, he was disgusted with the gaudy fluttering trumpery which contrasted so painfully with the grief of the wearer, and turning his back on the fair girl he quitted the chamber of misery.

Gabinius followed him with a hideous smirk.  He had directed the Emperor’s attention to the mosaic pavement in the steward’s room, and had shamelessly accused Keraunus of having offered to sell him a work that belonged to the palace, contrasting his conduct with his own rectitude.  Now the calumniated man was dead, and the truth could never come to light; this was necessarily a satisfaction to the miserable man, but he derived even greater pleasure from the reflection that Arsinoe could not now fill the part of Roxana, and that consequently there was once more a possibility that it might devolve on his daughter.

Hadrian walked on in front of him, silent and thoughtful.  Gabinius followed him into his writing-room, and there said with fulsome smoothness: 

“Ah, great Caesar, thus do the gods punish with a heavy hand the crimes of the guilty.”

Hadrian did not interrupt him, but he looked him keenly and enquiringly in the face, and then said, gravely, but coolly: 

“It seems to me, man, that I should do well to break off my connection with you, and to give some other dealer the commissions which I proposed to entrust to you.”

“Caesar!” stammered Gabinius, “I really do not know—­”

“But I do know,” interrupted the Emperor.  “You have attempted to mislead me, and throw your own guilt on the shoulders of another.”