come to no good.  Thus, for various reasons, host and guest were well content when the last dish was removed.  Before Pollux left the room the Emperor gave him the tablets with the verses and begged him, with a meaning smile, to desire the gate-keeper at the Caesareum to give them to Annaeus Florus the Roman.  He once more urgently charged the sculptor to look about for his young friend and, if he should find him at Lochias, to tell him that he, Claudius Venator, would return home ere long.  Then the artist went his way.

Hadrian still sat a long time listening to the talk close by; but after waiting for above an hour to hear some fresh mention made of himself, he paid his reckoning and went out into the Canopic way, now brilliantly lighted.  There he mingled with the revellers, and walked slowly onward, seeking suspiciously and anxiously for his vanished favorite.

CHAPTER III.

Antinous, searching for his master, had wandered about in the crowd.  Whenever he saw any figures of exceptional stature he followed them, but each time only to discover that he had entered on a false track.  Long and persistent effort was not in his nature, so as soon as he began to get tired, he gave up the search and sat down again on a stone bench in the garden of the Paneum.

Two cynic philosophers, with unkempt hair, tangled beards, and ragged cloaks flung over their shivering bodies, sat down by him and fell into loud and contemptuous abuse of the deference shown, ‘in these days,’ to external things and vulgar joys, and of the wretched sensualists who regarded pleasure and splendor, rather than virtue, as the aim and end of existence.  In order to be heard by the by-standers they spoke in loud tones, and the elder of the two, flourished his knotted stick as viciously, as though he had to defend himself against an attack.  Antinous felt much disgusted by the hideous appearance, the coarse manners, and shrill voices of these persons, and when he rose—­as the cynics’ diatribe seemed especially directed against him—­they scoffed at him as he went, mocking at his costume and his oiled and perfumed hair.  The Bithynian made no reply to this abuse.  It was odious to him, but he thought it might perhaps have amused Caesar.

He wandered on without thinking; the street in which he presently found himself must no doubt lead to the sea, and if he could once find himself on the shore he could not fail to make his way to Lochias.  By the time it was growing dark he was once more standing outside the little gate-house, and there he learnt from Doris that the Roman and her son had not yet returned.

What was he to do alone in the vast empty palace?  Were not the very slaves free to-day?  Why should not he too for once enjoy life independently and in his own way?  Full of the pleasant sense of being his own master and at liberty to walk in a road of his own choosing, he went onwards, and when he presently passed by the stall of a flower-seller, he began once more to think eagerly of Selene and the nosegay, which must long since have reached her hands.