CHAPTER XIV.

Hadrian had slept most comfortably; only a few hours it is true, but they had sufficed to refresh his spirit.  He was now in his sitting-room and had gone to the window, which took up more than half the extent of the long west wall of the room, and opened on the sea.  The wide opening, which extended downwards to within a few spans of the floor, was finished at either side by a tall pillar of fine reddish-brown porphyry, flecked with white, and crowned with gilt Corinthian capitals.

Against one of these the Emperor was leaning stroking the blood-hound, whose prompt and vigorous watchfulness had pleased him greatly.  What did he care for the terrors the dog might have caused a mere girl?

By the other pillar stood Antinous; he had placed his right foot on the low window-sill, and with his chin resting on his hand and his elbow on his knee, his figure was well within the room.

“This, Pontius, is really a first-rate man,” said Hadrian, pointing to a tapestry hanging across the narrow end of the room.  “This hanging was copied from a fruit-piece that I painted some time since, and had executed here in mosaic.  Yesterday this room was not even intended for my use, thus the hanging must have been put up between our arrival and this morning.  And how many other beautiful things I see around me!  The whole place looks habitable, and the eye finds an abundance of objects on which it can rest with pleasure.”

“Have you examined that magnificent cushion?” asked Antinous; “and the bronze figures, there in the corner, look to me far from bad.”

“They are admirable works,” said Hadrian.  “Still, I would do without them with pleasure rather than miss this window.  Which is the bluer, the sky or the sea?  And what a delicious spring breeze fans us here, in the middle of December.  Which are the more delightful to contemplate, the innumerable ships in the harbor, which communicate between this flowery land and other countries, and bless it with wealth, or the buildings which attract the eye in whichever direction it turns.  It is difficult to know whether most to admire their stately dimensions or the beauty of their forms.”

“And what is that long, huge dyke, which connects the island with the mainland?  Only look!  There is a huge trireme passing under one of the wide arches, on which it is supported—­and there comes another.”

“That is the great viaduct, called by the Alexandrians the Heptastadion, because it is said to be seven stadia in length; and in the upper portion it carries a stone water-course—­as an elder tree has in it a vein of pith-which supplies water to the island of Pharos.”

“What a pity it is,” said Antinous, “that we cannot overlook from here the whole of the structure with the men and the vehicles that swarm upon it like busy ants.  That little island and the narrow tongue of land that runs out into the harbor with the tall slender building at the end of it, half hide it.”