With these words he went up to the couch, and looking at Diodoros as he
lay, he murmured, as if speaking to himself and without paying any heed
to the younger men who crowded round him:

"There are no true Greeks left here; but the beauty of the ancestral race
is not easily stamped out, and is still to be seen in their descendants.
What a head, what features, and what hair!"

Then he felt the lad's breast, shoulders, and arms, exclaiming in honest
admiration, "What a godlike form!"

He laid his delicate old hand, with its network of blue veins, on the
sick man's forehead, again glanced round the room, and listened to
Ptolemaeus, who gave him a brief and technical report of the case; then,
sniffing the heavy scent that filled the hall, he said, as the Christian
leech ceased speaking:

"We will try; but not here--in a room less full of incense. This perfume
brings dreams, but no less surely induces fever. Have you no other room
at hand where the air is purer?"

An eager "Yes," in many voices was the reply; and Diodoros was forthwith
transferred into a small cubicle adjoining.

While he was being moved, Galenus went from bed to bed, questioning the
chief physician and the patients. He seemed to have forgotten Diodoros
and Melissa; but after hastily glancing at some and carefully examining
others, and giving advice where it was needful, he desired to see the
fair Alexandrian's lover once more.