“And the gem-cutter’s daughter?” asked Caracalla, in a trembling voice.  “You are sure she was burned in the building?”

“As sure as that I have zealously endeavored to let the Alexandrians feel your avenging hand,” replied the Egyptian resolutely, and with a bold face he confirmed his he.  “I have here the jewel she wore on her arm.  It was found on the charred body in the cellar.  Adventus, your chamberlain, says that Melissa received it yesterday as a gift from you.  Here it is.”

And he handed Caracalla the serpent-shaped bracelet which Caesar had sent to his sweetheart before setting out for the Circus.  The fire had damaged it, but there was no mistaking it.  It had been found beneath the ruins on a human arm, and Zminis had only learned from the chamberlain, to whom he had shown it, that it had belonged to the daughter of Heron.

“Even the features of the corpse,” Zminis added, “were still recognizable.”

“The corpse!” Caesar echoed gloomily.  “And it was the Alexandrians, you say, who destroyed the house?”

“Yes, my lord; a raging mob, and mingled with them men of every race-Jews, Greeks, Syrians, what not.  Most of them had lost a father, a son, or a brother, sent to Hades by your vengeance.  Their wildest curses were for Alexander, the painter, who in fact had played the spy for you.  But the Macedonian phalanx arrived at the right moment.  They killed most of them and took some prisoners.  You can see them yourself in the morning.  As regards the wife of Seleukus—­”

“Well,” exclaimed Caesar, and his eye brightened again.

“She fell a victim to the clumsiness of the praetorians.”

“Indeed!” interrupted the legate Quintus Flavius Nobilior, who had granted Alexander’s life to the prayer of the twins Aurelius; and Macrinus also forbade any insulting observations as to the blameless troops whom he had the honor to command.

But the Egyptian was not to be checked; he went on eagerly:  “Pardon, my lords.  It is perfectly certain, nevertheless, that it was a praetorian—­ his name is Rufus, and he belongs to the second cohort—­who pierced the lady Berenike with his spear.”

Flavius here begged to be allowed to speak, and reported how Berenike had sought and found her end.  And he did so as though he were narrating the death of a heroine, but he added, in a tone of disapproval:  “Unhappily, the misguided woman died with a curse on you, great Caesar, on her treasonable lips.”

“And this female hero finds her Homer in you!” cried Caesar.  “We will speak together again, my Quintus.”

He raised a brimming cup to his lips and emptied it at a draught; then, setting it on the table with such violence that it rang, he exclaimed “Then you have brought me none of those whom I commanded you to capture?  Even the feeble girl who had not quitted her father’s house you allowed to be murdered by those coarse monsters!  And you think I shall look on you with favor?  By this time to-morrow the gem-cutter and his son Alexander are here before me, or by the head of my divine father you go to the wild beasts in the Circus.”