In spite of the rain, which began to fill more violently, he went out into the open air, of which the sweltering oppressiveness had helped to fetter his feeble volition, and called to the dogs, with whose help he proposed seeking the Emperor; but just then he heard the bark of Argus, and soon after Hadrian and Mastor stepped out of the darkness into the brightness which shone out from the tent, where lights were burning.

The Emperor gave his favorite but a brief greeting and silently submitted while Antinous dried his hair and brought him some refreshments, and Mastor bathed his feet and dressed him in fresh garments.  As he reclined with the Bithyman, before the supper which was standing ready, he said: 

“A strange evening! how hot and oppressive the atmosphere is.  We must be on the lookout, something serious is brewing.”

“What happened to you, my Lord?”

“Many things.  At the door of the very first tomb that I was about to enter I found an old black woman who stretched out her hands against us to keep us out and shrieked out words that sounded horrible.”

“Did you understand her?”

“No—­who can learn Egyptian.”

“Then you do not know what she said?”

“I was to find out—­she cried out ‘Dead!’ and again ‘Dead!’ and in the tomb which she was watching there were I know not how many persons attacked by the plague.”

“You saw them?”

“Yes, I had only heard of this disease till then.  It is frightful, and quite answers to the descriptions I had read of it.”

“But Caesar!” cried Antinous reproachfully and in alarm.

“When we turned our backs on the tombs,” continued Hadrian, paying no heed to the lad’s exclamation, “we were met by an elderly man dressed in white and a strange-looking maiden.  She was lame but of remarkable beauty.”

“And she was going to the sick?”

“Yes, she had brought medicine and food to them.”

“But she did not go in among them?” asked Antinous eagerly.

“She did, in spite of my warnings.  In her companion I recognized an old acquaintance.”

’An old one?”

“At any rate older than myself.  We had met in Athens when we still were young.  At that time he was one of the school of Plato and the most zealous, nay, perhaps the most gifted of us all.”

“How came such a man among the plague-stricken people of Besa?  Is he become a physician?”

“No.  But at Athens he sought fervently and eagerly for the truth, and now he asserts that he has found it.”

“Here, among the Egyptians?”

“In Alexandria among the Christians.”

“And the lame girl who accompanied the philosopher—­does she too believe in the crucified God?”

“Yes.  She is a sick-nurse or something of the kind.  Indeed there is something grand in the ecstatic craze of these people.”

“Is it true that they worship an ass and a dove?”