But what was he to her?  Her heart was given to the infant son of her niece Mammaea;—­[The third Caesar after Caracalla, Alexander Severus]—­in him she discovered every gift and virtue.  What joy there would be among the women of Julia’s train when it was known that Caesar’s chosen bride had disdained him, and, in him, the very purple.  But that joy would not be of long duration, for the news of the punishment by death of a hundred thousand Alexandrians would, he knew, fall like a lash on the women.  He fancied he could hear their howls and wailing, and see the horror of Philostratus, and how he would join the women in bemoaning the horrible deed!  He, the philosopher, would perhaps be really grieved; aye, and if he had been at his side this morning everything might perhaps have been different.  But the deed was done, and now he must take the consequences.

That the better sort would avoid him after such an act was self-evident—­they had already refused to eat with him.  On the other hand, it had brought nearer to him the favorites whom he had attracted to his person.  Theocritus and Pandion, Antigonus and Epagathos, the priest of Alexander, who at Rome was overwhelmed with debt, and who in Egypt had become a rich man again, would cling to him more closely.

“Base wretches!” he muttered to himself.

If only Philostratus would come back to him!  But he scarcely dared hope it.  The evil took so much more care for their own well-being and multiplication than the good.  If one of the righteous fell away, all the others forthwith turned their backs on him; and when the penitent desired to return to the fold, the immaculate repelled or avoided him.  But the wicked could always find the fallen man at once, and would cling to him and hinder him from returning.  Their ranks were always open to him, however closely he might formerly have been attached to the virtuous.  To live in exclusive intercourse with these reprobates was an odious thought.  He could compel whom he chose to live with him; but of what use were silent and reluctant companions?  And whose fault was it that he had sent away Philostratus, the best of them all?  Hers—­the faithless traitoress, from whom he had looked for peace and joy, who had declared that she felt herself bound to him, the trickster in whom he had believed he saw Roxana—­But she was no more.  On the table by his bed, among his own jewels, lay the golden serpent he had given her—­he fancied he could see it in the dark—­and she had worn it even in death.  He shuddered; he felt as though a woman’s arm, all black and charred, was stretched out to him in the night, and the golden snake uncurled from it and reached forth as though to bite him.

He shivered, and hid his head under the coverlet; but, ashamed and vexed at his own foolish weakness, he soon emerged from the stifling darkness, and an inward voice scornfully asked him whether he still believed that the soul of the great Macedonian inhabited his body.  There was an end of this proud conviction.  He had no more connection with Alexander than Melissa had with Roxana, whom she resembled.