must always be to Paula, that he had gone with the senator, far from Memphis.  Heliodora—­ her instinct assured her—­was the poor, forsaken woman with whom he had trifled at Byzantium, and for whom he had committed that fatal theft of the emerald.  If Fate would but bring him home to her, and if she then yielded all he asked—­all her own soul urged her to grant, then she would be the sole mistress and queen of his heart—­she must be, she was sure of it!  And though, even as she thought of it, she bowed her head in care, it was not from fear of losing him; it was only her anxiety about her father, her good old friend, Rufinus, and his family, whom she had made so entirely her own.

This was the state of affairs this morning, when to his old friend’s vexation, Philippus had so hastily and silently drunk off his after-breakfast draught; just as he set down the cup, the black door-keeper announced that a hump-backed man wished to see his master at once on important business.

“Important business!” repeated the leech.  “Give me four more legs in addition to my own two, or a machine to make time longer than it is, and then I will take new patients-otherwise no!  Tell the fellow. . . .”

“No, not sick. . . .” interrupted the negro.  “Come long way.  Gardener to Greek man Rufinus.”

Philippus started:  he could guess what this messenger had to say, and his heart sank with dread as he desired that he might be shown in.

A glance at Gibbus told him what he had rightly feared.  The poor fellow was hardly recognizable.  He was coated with dust from head to foot, and this made him look like a grey-haired old man; his sandals hung to his feet in strips; the sweat, pouring down his cheeks, had made gutters as it were in the dust on his face, and his tears, as the physician held out his hand to him, washed out other channels.

In reply to the leech’s anxious, long drawn “Dead?” he nodded silently; and when Philippus, clasping his hands to his temples, cried out:  “Dead!  My poor old Rufinus dead!  But how, in Heaven’s name, did it happen?  Speak, man, speak!”—­Gibbus pointed to the old philosopher and said:  “Come out then, with me, Master.  No third person. . . .”

Philippus, however, gave him to understand that Horapollo was his second self; and the hunch-back went on to tell him what he had seen, and how his beloved master had met his end.  Horapollo sat listening in astonishment, shaking his head disapprovingly, while the physician muttered curses.  But the bearer of evil tidings was not interrupted, and it was not till he had ended that Philippus, with bowed head and tearful eyes, said: 

“Poor, faithful old man; to think that he should die thus—­he who leaves behind him all that is best in life, while I—­I. . . .”  And he groaned aloud.  The old man glanced at him with reproachful displeasure.

While the leech broke the seals of the tablets, which the abbess had carefully closed, and began to read the contents, Horapollo asked the gardener:  “And the nuns?  Did they all escape?”