CHAPTER XXII

A night and a day had slipped away since the death of the Bithynian.  Ships and boats from every part of the province had collected before Besa to seek for the body of the drowned youth, the shores swarmed with men, and cressets and torches had dimmed the moonlight on river and shore all through the night; but they had not yet succeeded in finding the body of the beautiful youth.

Hadrian had heard in what way Antinous had perished.  He had required Mastor to repeat to him more than once the last words of his faithful companion and neither to add nor to omit a single syllable.  Hadrian’s accurate memory cherished them all and now he had sat till dawn and from dawn till the sun had reached the meridian, repeating them again and again to him self.  He sat gloomily brooding and would neither eat nor drink.  The misfortune which had threatened him had fallen—­and what a grief was this!  If indeed Fate would accept the anguish he now felt in the place of all other suffering it might have had in store for him he might look forward to years free from care, but he felt as though he would rather have spent the remainder of his existence in sorrow and misery with his Antinous by his side than enjoy, without him, all that men call happiness, peace and prosperity.

Sabina and her escort had arrived-a host of men; but he had strictly ordered that no one, not even his wife, was to be admitted to his presence.  The comfort of tears was denied him, but his grief gripped him at the heart, clouded his brain and made hint so irritably sensitive that an unfamiliar voice, though even at a distance, disturbed him and made him angry.

The party who had arrived by water were not allowed to occupy the tents which had been pitched for them not far from his, because he desired to be alone, quite alone, with his anguish of spirit.  Mastor, whom he had hitherto regarded rather a useful chattel than as a human creature, now grew nearer to him—­had he not been the one witness of his darling’s strange disappearance.  Towards the close of this, the most miserable night he had ever known, the slave asked him whether he should not fetch the physician from the ships, he looked so pale; but Hadrian forbade it.

“If I could only cry like a woman,” he said, “or like other fathers whose sons are snatched away by death, that would he the best remedy.  You poor souls will have a bad time now, for the sun of my life has lost its light and the trees by the way-side have lost their verdure.”

When he was alone once more he sat staring into vacancy and muttered to himself: