praising my boys just now.  And the girl! . .  Only a few days ago, it was a pretty, shy thing that no one would ever have expected to do anything great; and now, what have we not to thank that gentle child for?  The little one was always her mother’s darling.  Eternal gods!  I dare not think of it!  If only she who is gone might have had the joy of hearing me called senator and praetor!  O child! if she could have sat with us to-day in the emperor’s seats, and we two could have seen you there—­you, our pride, honored by the whole city, Caesar’s future bride.”

Here the strong man with the soft heart broke down, and, clasping his hands over his face, sobbed aloud, while Melissa clung to him and stroked his bearded cheeks.

Under her loving words of consolation he soon regained his composure, and, still struggling against the rising tears, he cried: 

“Thank Heaven, there can be no more foolish talk of flight!  I shall stay here; I shall never take advantage of the ivory chair that belongs to me in the curia in Rome.  Your husband, my child, and the state, would scarcely expect it of me.  If, however, Caesar presents me as his father, with estates and treasures, my first thought shall be to raise a monument to your mother.  You shall see!  A monument, I tell you, without a rival.  It shall represent the strength of man submissive to womanly charm.”

He bent down to kiss his daughter’s brow, and whispered in her ear: 

“Gaze confidently into the future, my girl.  A father’s eye is not easily deceived, and so I tell you—­that the emperor has been forced to shed blood do insure the safety of the throne; but, in personal intercourse with him, I learned to know your future husband as a noble-hearted man.  Indeed, I am not rich enough to thank the gods for such a son-in-law!”

Melissa gazed after her father, incapable of speaking.  It went to her heart that all these hopes should be changed to sorrow and disappointment through her.  And so she said, with tearful eyes, and shook hey head when the lady assured her that with her it was a question of a cruelly spoiled life, whereas her father would only have to renounce some idle vanities which he would forget as easily as he had seized upon them.

“You do not know him,” answered the maiden, sadly.  “If I fly, then he too must hide himself in a far country.  He will never be happy again if they take him from the little house—­his birds—­our mother’s grave.  It was for her sake alone that he took no thought for the ivory seat in the curia.  If you only knew how he clings to everything that reminds him of our mother, and she never left our city.”

Here she was interrupted by the entrance of Philostratus.  He was not alone; an imperial slave accompanied him, bringing a graceful basket with gifts from the emperor to Melissa.