“Theocritus, formerly an actor and dancer,” the priest whispered to Melissa.  “Caesar’s whim made the mimic a senator, a legate, and a favorite.”

But Melissa only knew that he was speaking, and did not take in the purport of his speech; for this man, slowly descending the steps, absorbed her whole sympathy.  She knew well the look of those who suffer and conceal it from the eyes of the world; and some cruel disease was certainly consuming this youth, who ruled the earth, but whose purple robes would be snatched at soon enough by greedy hands if he should cease to seem strong and able.  And now, again, he looked old and worn—­poor wretch, who yet was so young and born to be so abundantly happy!  He was, to be sure, a base and blood-stained tyrant, but not the less a miserable and unhappy man.  The more severe the pain he had to endure, the harder must he find it to hide it from the crowd who were constantly about him.  There is but one antidote to hatred, and that is pity; it was with the eager compassion of a woman’s heart that Melissa marked every movement of the imperial murderer, as soon as she recognized his sufferings, and when their eyes had met.  Nothing now escaped her keen glance which could add to her sympathy for the man she had loathed but a minute before.  She noticed a slight limp in his gait and a convulsive twitching of his eyelids; his slender, almost transparent hand, she reflected, was that of a sick man, and pain and fever, no doubt, had thinned his hair, which had left many places bald.

And when the high—­priest of Serapis and the augurs met him at the bottom of the steps and Caesar’s eye again put on the cruel scowl of yesterday, she would not doubt that it was stern self-command which gave him that threatening glare, to seem terrible, in spite of his anguish, to those whose obedience he required.  He had really needed his companion’s support as they descended the stair, that she could plainly see; and she had observed, too, how carefully his guide had striven to conceal the fact that he was upholding him; but the courtier was too tall to achieve the task he had set himself.  Now, she was much shorter than Caesar, and she was strong, too.  Her arm would have afforded him a much better support.

But how could she think of such a thing?—­she, the sister of Alexander, the betrothed of Diodoros, whom she truly loved!

Caesar mingled with the priests, and her guide told her that the corridor was now free.  She peeped into the litter, and, seeing that Diodoros still slept, she followed him, lost in thought, and giving short and heedless answers to Andreas and the physicians She had not listened to the priest’s information, and scarcely turned her head to look out, when a tall, thin man with a bullet-head and deeply wrinkled brow was pointed out to her as Macrinus, the prefect of the body-guard, the most powerful man in Rome next to Caesar; and then the “friends” of Caracalla, whom she had seen yesterday, and the historian Dion Cassius, with other senators and members of the imperial train.