When the prefect, with evident annoyance, but still quite calmly, desired to know what this extraordinary insult might be, Theocritus showed that even in his high position he had preserved the accurate memory of the mime, and, half angry, but yet anxious to give full effect to the lines by voice and gesture, he explained that “some wretch had fastened a rope to one of the doors of the sanctuary, and had written below it the blasphemous words: 

  ’Hail!  For so welcome a guest never came to the sovereign of Hades. 
   Who ever peopled his realm, Caesar, more freely than thou? 
   Laurels refuse to grow green in the darksome abode of Serapis;
   Take, then, this rope for a gift, never more richly deserved.’”

“It is disgraceful!” exclaimed the prefect.

“Your indignation is well founded.  But the biting tongue of the frivolous mixed races dwelling in this city is well known.  They have tried it on me; and if, in this instance, any one is to blame, it is not I, the imprisoned prefect, but the chief and captain of the night-watch, whose business it is to guard Caesar’s residence more strictly.”

At this Theocritus was furious, and poured out a flood of words, expatiating on the duties of a prefect as Caesar’s representative in the provinces.  “His eye must be as omniscient as that of the all-seeing Deity.  The better he knew the uproarious rabble over whom he ruled, the more evidently was it his duty to watch over Caesar’s person as anxiously as a mother over her child, as a miser over his treasure.”

The high-sounding words flowed with dramatic emphasis, the sentimental speaker adding to their impressiveness by the action of his hands, till it was more than the invalid could bear.  With a pinched smile, he raised himself with difficulty, and interrupted Theocritus with the impatient exclamation, “Still the actor!”

“Yes, still!” retorted the favorite, in a hard voice.  “You, however, have been even longer—­what you have, indeed, been too long—­Prefect of Egypt!” With an angry fling he threw the corner of his toga over his shoulder, and, though his hand shook with rage, the pliant drapery fell in graceful folds over his athletic limbs.  He turned his back on the prefect, and, with the air of a general who has just been crowned with laurels, he stalked through the anteroom and past Philip once more.

The philosopher had told his sister all this in a few sentences.  He now paused in his walk to and fro to answer Melissa’s question as to whether this upstart’s influence were really great enough to turn so noble and worthy a man out of his office.

“Can you ask?” said Philip.  “Titianus had no doubts from the first; and what I heard in the Serapeum—­but all in good time.  The prefect was sorry for my father and Alexander, but ended by saying that he himself needed an intercessor; for, if it were not to-day, at any rate to-morrow, the actor would inveigle Caesar into signing his death-warrant.”