"I am Caesar."

At these words the steward's hand dropped from the chiton of the half-
throttled dealer. Speechless and with a glassy stare he gazed in
Hadrian's face for a few seconds. Then he suddenly started, staggered
backwards, uttered a loud choking, gurgling, nameless cry, and fell back
on the floor like a mass of rock shaken from its foundations by an
earthquake. The room shook again with his fall.

Hadrian was startled and when he saw him lying motionless at his feet he
bent over him--less from pity than from a wish to see what was the matter
with him; for he had also dabbled in medicine. Just as he was lifting
the fallen man's hand to feel his pulse Arsinoe rushed into the room.
She had heard the last words of the antagonists with breathless anxiety
and her father's fall and now threw herself on her knees by the side of
the unhappy man, just opposite to Hadrian, and as his distorted and grey-
white face told her what had occurred she broke out in a passionate cry
of anguish. Her brothers and sisters followed at her heels, and when
they saw their favorite sister bewailing herself they followed her
example without knowing at first what Arsinoe was crying for, but soon
with terror and horror at their father lying there stiff and disfigured.
The Emperor, who had never had either son or daughter of his own, found
nothing so intolerable as the presence of crying children. However he
endured the wailing and whimpering that surrounded him till he had
ascertained the condition of the man lying on the ground before him.

"He is dead," he said in a few minutes. "Cover his face, Master."

Arsinoe and the children broke out afresh, and Hadrian glanced down at
them with annoyance. When his eye fell on Arsinoe, whose costly robe,