It was with sincere enthusiasm that he expatiated on the skill with which the artist had reproduced in color the noble lines which Caracalla so much admired in the sculpture of the great Greek masters; how warm and tender the flesh was; how radiant the light of those glorious eyes; how living the waving hair, as though it still breathed of the scented oil!  And when Philostratus explained that though Alexander had no doubt spoken some rash and treasonable words, he could not in any case be the author of the insulting verses which had been found at the Serapeum with the rope, Caracalla echoed his praises of the picture, and desired to see both the painter and his sister.

That morning, as he rose from his bed, he had been informed that the planets which had been seen during the past night from the observatory of the Serapeum, promised him fortune and happiness in the immediate future.  He was himself a practiced star-reader, and the chief astrologer of the temple had pointed out to him how peculiarly favorable the constellation was whence he had deduced his prediction.  Then, Phoebus Apollo had appeared to him in a dream; the auguries from the morning’s sacrifices had all been favorable; and, before he dispatched Philostratus to fetch Melissa, he added: 

“It is strange!  The best fortune has always come to me from a gloomy sky.  How brightly the sun shone on my marriage with the odious Plautilla!  It has rained, on the contrary, on almost all my victories; and it was under a heavy storm that the oracle assured me the soul of Alexander the Great had selected this tortured frame in which to live out his too early ended years on earth.  Can such coincidence be mere chance?  Phoebus Apollo, your favorite divinity—­and that, too, of the sage of Tyana—­may perhaps have been angry with me.  He who purified himself from blood-guiltiness after killing the Python is the god of expiation.  I will address myself to him, like the noble hero of your book.  This morning the god visited me again; so I will have such sacrifice slain before him as never yet was offered.  Will that satisfy you, O philosopher hard to be appeased?”

“More than satisfy me, my Bassianus,” replied Philostratus.  “Yet remember that, according to Apollonius, the sacrifice is effective only through the spirit in which it is offered.”

“Always a ‘but’ and an ’if’!” exclaimed Caracalla, as his friend left the room to call Melissa from the high-priest’s quarters, where she was waiting.

For the first time for some days Caesar found himself alone.  Leading the lion by the collar, he went to the window.  The rain had ceased, but black clouds still covered the heavens.  Below him lay the opening of the street of Hermes into the great square, swarming with human life, and covered with the now drenched tents of the soldiery; and his eyes fell on that of a centurion, a native of Alexandria, just then receiving a visit from his family, to whom the varied fortunes of a warrior’s life had brought him back once more.