Caesar then beckoned to the chief of the nightwatch, and, having laid the blame of the unpleasant occurrences in the Circus on his carelessness, cut the frightened officer short when he proposed to take every one prisoner whom the lictors had marked among the noisy.

“Not yet!  On no account to-morrow,” Caracalla ordered.  “Mark each one carefully.  Keep your eyes open at the next performance.  Put down the names of the disaffected.  Take care that the rope hangs about the neck of the guilty.  The time to draw it tight will come presently.  When they think themselves safe, the cowardly show their true faces.  Wait till I give the signal—­certainly not in the next few days; then seize upon them, and let none escape!”

Caesar had given these orders with smiling lips.  He wanted first to make Melissa his, and, like a shepherd, to revel with her in the sweetness of their love.  No moment of this time should be darkened for him by the tears and prayers of his bride.  When she should hear, later on, of her husband’s bloody vengeance upon his enemies, she would have to accept it as an accomplished fact; and means, no doubt, would be found to soothe her indignation.

Those who after the insulting occurrences in the Circus had expected to see Caesar raging and storming, were hurried from one surprise to another; for even after his conversation with the night-watch he looked cheerful and contented, and exclaimed:  “It is long since you have seen me thus!  My own mirror will ask itself if it has not changed owners.  It is to be hoped it may have cause to accustom itself to reflect me as a happy man as often as I look in it.  The two highest joys of life are before me, and I know not what would be left for me to desire if only Philostratus were here to share the coming days with me.”

The grave senator Cassius Dio here stepped forward and observed that there were advantages in their amiable friend’s withdrawal from the turmoil of court life.  His Life of Apollonius, to which all the world was looking forward, would come all the sooner to a close.

“If only that I might talk to him of the man of Tyana,” cried the emperor, “I wish his biographer were here to-day.  To possess little and require nothing is the wish of the sage; and I can well imagine circumstances in which one who has enjoyed power and riches to satiety should consider himself blessed as a simple countryman following out the precept of Horace, ‘procul negotiis,’ plowing his fields and gathering the fruit of his own trees.  According to Apollonius, the wise man must also be poor, and, though the citizens of his state are permitted to acquire treasures, the wealthy are looked upon as dishonorable.  There is some sense in this paradox, for the possessions that are to be obtained with money are but vulgar joys.  I know by experience what it is that purifies the soul, that lifts it up and makes it truly blessed.  It does not come of power or riches.  Whoso has known it, he to whom it has been revealed—­”