But Caesar wrathfully commanded him to be silent, and Alexander quietly went on:  “You can threaten, and you will array all your slanderous arts against us, I know you.  But here sits a sovereign who protects the innocent—­and I and mine are innocent.  He will set his heel on your head when he knows you—­the curse of this city—­for the adder that you are!  He is deceiving you now in small things, great Caesar, and later he will deceive you in greater ones.  Listen now how he has lied to you.  He says he discovered a caricature of your illustrious person in the guise of a soldier.  Why, then, did he not bring it away from the place where it could only excite disaffection, and might even mislead those who should see it into the belief that your noble person was that of a dwarf?  The answer is self-evident.  He left it to betray others into further mockery, to bring them to ruin.”

Caesar had listened with approval, and now sternly asked the Egyptian: 

“Did you see the image?”

“In the Elephant tavern!” yelled the man.

But Alexander shook his head doubtfully, and begged permission to ask the Egyptian a question.  This was granted, and the artist inquired whether the soldier stood alone.

“So far as I remember, yes,” replied Zminis, almost beside himself.

“Then your memory is as false as your soul!” Alexander shouted in his face, “for there was another figure by the soldier’s side.  The clay, still wet, clung to the same board as the figure of the soldier, modeled by the same hand.  No, no, my crafty fellow, you will not catch the workman; for, being warned, he is already on the high-seas.”

“It is false!” shrieked Zminis.

“That remains to be proved,” said Alexander, scornfully.—­“Allow me now, great Caesar, to show you the figures.  They have been brought by my orders, and are in the anteroom-carefully covered up, of course, for the fewer the persons who see them the better.”

Caracalla nodded his consent, and Alexander hurried away; the despot heaping abuse on Zminis, and demanding why he had not at once had the images removed.  The Egyptian now confessed that he had only heard of the caricature from a friend, and declared that if he had seen it he should have destroyed it on the spot.  Macrinus here tried to excuse the spy, by remarking that this zealous official had only tried to set his services in a favorable light.  The falsehood could not be approved, but was excusable.  But he had scarcely finished speaking, when his opponent, the praetor, Lucius Priscillianus, observed, with a gravity he but rarely displayed: 

“I should have thought that it was the first duty of the man who ought to be Caesar’s mainstay and representative here, to let his sovereign hear nothing but the undistorted truth.  Nothing, it seems to me, can be less excusable than a lie told to divine Caesar’s face!”

A few courtiers, who were out of the prefect’s favor, as well as the high-priest of Serapis, agreed with the speaker.  Caracalla, however, paid no heed to them, but sat with his eyes fixed on the door, deeply wounded in his vanity by the mere existence of such a caricature.