“This is a delicious joke!  What will the Jupiter be like, when the eagle is such a bird as this!”

Keraunus was not long to wait for.  While pacing up and down the passage outside the Emperor’s room, his bad humor had risen considerably, for he took it as a slight on the part of the architect, that he should allow him—­whose birth and dignities he would have learnt from his slave—­to wait several minutes, each of which seemed to him a quarter of an hour.  His expectation too, that the Roman would come to conduct him in person into his apartment was by no means fulfilled, for the slave’s message was briefly—­“He may come in.”

“Did he say may?  Did he not say ’please to come in, or have the goodness to come in?’” asked the steward.

“He may come in—­was what he said,” replied the slave.

Keraunus grunted out, “Well!” set his gold circlet straight on his head which he held very upright, crossed his arms over his broad chest with a sigh, and ordered the black man: 

“Open the door.”

The steward crossed the threshold with much dignity:  then, not to commit any breach of courtesy, he bowed low, and was about to begin to utter his reprimand in cutting terms, when a glance at the Emperor and at the splendid decoration which the room had undergone since the day previous, not to mention the very unpleasant growling of the big dog, prompted him to strike a milder string.  His slave had followed him and had sought a safe corner near the door, between the wall of the room and a couch, but he himself, conquering his alarm at the dog, went forward some distance into the room.  The Emperor had seated himself on the window-sill; he pressed his foot lightly on the head of the dog, and gazed at Keraunus as at some remarkable curiosity.  His eye thus met that of the steward and made him clearly understand that he had to do with a greater personage than he had expected.  There was something imposing in the person of the man who sat before him; for this very reason, however, his pride stood on tiptoe, and he asked in a tone of swaggering dignity, though not so sharply and abruptly as he had intended.

“Am I standing before the new visitor to Lochias, the architect Claudius Venator of Rome?”

“You are—­standing—­” replied the Emperor, with a roguish side glance at Antinous.

“You have met with a friendly reception to this palace.  Like my fathers, who have enjoyed the stewardship of it for centuries, I know how to exercise the sacred duties of hospitality.”

“I am surprised to hear of the high antiquity of your family and bow to your pious sentiments,” answered Hadrian, in the same tone as the steward.  “What farther may I learn from you?”

“I did not come here to relate history,” said Keraunus, whose gall rose as he thought he detected a mocking smile on the stranger’s lips.  “I did not come here to tell stories, but to complain that you, as a warmly-welcomed guest, show so little anxiety to protect your host from injury.”