“What is this?  I have opened the record of the oracle of Apis.  How did it come among to-day’s letters?”

Antinous went up to Hadrian, looked at the sack, and said: 

“Mastor has made a mistake.  These are the documents from Memphis.  I will bring you the right despatch-bag.”

“Stay!” said Hadrian, eagerly seizing his favorite’s hand.  “Is this a mere trick of chance or a decree of Fate?  Why should this particular sack have come into my hands to-day of all others?  Why, out of twenty documents it contains, should I have taken out this very one?  Look here.—­I will explain these signs to you.  Here stand three pairs of arms bearing shields and spears, close by the name of the Egyptian month that corresponds to our November.  These are the three signs of misfortune.  The lutes up there are of happier omen.  The masts here indicate the usual state of affairs.  Three of these hieroglyphics always occur together.  Three lutes indicate much good fortune, two lutes and one mast good fortune and moderate prosperity, one pair of arms and two lutes misfortune, followed by happiness, and so forth.  Here, in November, begin the arms with weapons, and here they stand in threes and threes, and portend nothing but unqualified misfortune, never mitigated by a single lute.  Do you see, boy?  Have you understood the meaning of these signs?”

“Perfectly well; but do you interpret them rightly?  The fighting arms may perhaps lead to victory.”

“No.  The Egyptians use them to indicate conflict, and to them conflict and unrest are identical with what we call evil and disaster.”

“That is strange!”

“Nay, it is well conceived; for they say that everything was originally created good by the gods, but that the different portions of the great All changed their nature by restless and inharmonious mingling.  This explanation was given me by the priest of Apis, and here—­here by the month of November are the three fighting arias—­a hideous token.  If one of the flashes which light up this tent so incessantly, like a living stream of light were to strike you, or me, and all of us—­I should not wonder.  Terrible—­terrible things hang over us!  It requires some courage under such omens as these, to keep an untroubled gaze and not to quail.”

“Only use your own arms against the fighting arms of the Egyptian gods; they are powerful,” said Antinous; but Hadrian let his head sink on his breast, and said, in a tone of discouragement: 

“The gods themselves must succumb to Destiny.”

The thunder continued to roar.  More than once the storm snapped the tent-ropes, and the slaves were obliged to hold on to the Emperor’s fragile shelter with their hands; the chambers of the clouds poured mighty torrents out upon the desert range which for years had not known a drop of rain, and every rift and runlet was filled with a stream or a torrent.