Three times had he seen the throne change masters.  An emperor and an empress had been stripped of the purple and mutilated before his eyes.

Aye, then and there he had had real and intense excitement to thrill him to the marrow and quick.  As for the rest!  Well, yes, he had had more trivial pleasures too.  He had not been received as other Egyptians were:  half-educated philosophers—­who called themselves Sages and assumed a mystic and pompously solemn demeanor, Astrologers, Rhetoricians, poverty-stricken but witty and venemous satirists, physicians making a display of the learning of their forefathers, fanatical theologians—­always ready to avail themselves of other weapons than reason and dogma in their bitter contests over articles of faith, hermits and recluses—­as foul in mind as they were dirty in their persons, corn-merchants and usurers with whom it was dangerous to conclude a bargain without witnesses.  Orion was none of these.  As the handsome, genial, and original-minded son of the rich and noble Governor, Mukaukas George, he was welcomed as a sort of ambassador; whatever the golden youth of the city allowed themselves was permitted to him.  His purse was as well lined as theirs, his health and vigor far more enduring; and his horses had beaten theirs in three races, though he drove them himself and did not trust them to paid charioteers.  The “rich Egyptian,” the “New Antinous,” “handsome Orion,” as he was called, could never be spared from feast or entertainment.  He was a welcome guest at the first houses in the city, and in the palace and the villa of the Senator Justinus, an old friend of his father, he was as much at home as a son of the house.

It was under his roof, and the auspices of his kindhearted wife Martina, that he made acquaintance with the fair Heliodora, the widow of a nephew of the Senator; and the whole city had been set talking of the tender intimacy Orion had formed with the beautiful young woman whose rigid virtue had hitherto been a subject of admiration no less than her fair hair and the big jewels with which she loved to set off her simple but costly dress.  And many a fair Byzantine had striven for the young Egyptian’s good graces before Heliodora had driven them all out of the field.  Still, she had not yet succeeded in enslaving Orion deeply and permanently; and when, last evening, he had assured his mother that she was not mistress of his heart he spoke truly.

His conduct in the Capital had not certainly been exemplary, but he had never run wild, and had enjoyed the respect not only of his companions in pleasure, but of grave and venerable men whom he had met in the house of Justinus, and who sang the praises of his intelligence and eagerness to learn.  As a boy he had been a diligent scholar, and here he let no opportunity slip.  Not least had he cultivated his musical talents in the Imperial city, and had acquired a rare mastery in singing and playing the lute.