“Something—­something which will silence your foolish doubts—­” Caesar panted out.  “Patience—­wait.  Only a minute, and you shall see.—­But, first”—­and he turned to Melissa—­“what is your name, girl?”

“Melissa,” she replied, in a low and tremulous voice.

“And your father’s and your mother’s?”

“Heron is my father’s name, and my mother—­she is dead—­was called Olympias, the daughter of Philip.”

“And you are of Macedonian race?”

“Yes, my lord.  My father and mother both were of pure Macedonian descent.”

The emperor glanced triumphantly at Philostratus, and briefly exclaiming, “That will do, I think,” he clapped his hands, and instantly his old chamberlain, Adventus, hurried in from the adjoining room, followed by the whole band of “Caesar’s friends.”  Caracalla, however, only said to them: 

“You can wait till I call you.—­You, Adventus!  I want the gem with the marriage of Alexander.”  The freedman took the gem out of an ebony casket standing on Caesar’s writing-table, and Caracalla, holding the philosopher by the arm, said, with excited emphasis: 

“That gem I inherited from my father, the divine Severus.  It was engraved before that child came into the world.  Now you shall see it, and if you then say that it is an illusion—­But why should you doubt it?  Pythagoras and your hero Apollonius both knew whose body their souls had inhabited in a former existence.  Mine—­though my mother has laughed at my belief, and others have dared to do the same-mine, five hundred years ago, dwelt in the greatest of heroes, Alexander the Macedonian—­a right royal tabernacle!”

He snatched the gem from the chamberlain’s hand, and while he devoured it with his eyes, looking from time to time into Melissa’s face, he eagerly ran on: 

“It is she.  None but a blind man, a fool, a malignant idiot, could doubt it!  Any who henceforth shall dare mock at my conviction that I was brought into the world to fulfill the life-span of that great hero, will learn to rue it!  Here—­it is but natural—­here, in the city he founded and which bears his name, I have found positive proof that the bond which unites the son of Philip with the son of Severus is something more than a mere fancy.  This maiden—­look at her closely—­is the re-embodiment of the soul of Roxana, as I am of that of her husband.  Even you must see now how naturally it came about that she should uplift her heart and hands in prayer for me.  Her soul, when it once dwelt in Roxana, was fondly linked with that of the hero; and now, in the bosom of this simple maiden, it is drawn to the unforgotten fellow-soul which has found its home in my breast.”

He spoke with enthusiastic and firm conviction of the truth of his strange imagining, as though he were delivering a revelation from the gods.  He bade Philostratus approach and compare the features of Roxana, as carved in the onyx, with those of the young supplicant.