arranged, his eyes fixed on vacancy, scarcely able to move a finger.
Alexander held his trembling hand, and when the physician, a stout man of
middle age, took the artist's place and bade him retire, Caracalla, in a
low voice, desired him to remain.

As soon as Caesar's suspended faculties were fully awake again, he turned
to the cause of his attack. With a look of pain and entreaty he desired
Alexander to give him the tablets once more; but the artist assured him--
and Caracalla seemed not sorry to believe--that he had crushed the wax in
his convulsion. The sick man himself no doubt felt that such food was
too strong for him. After he had remained staring at nothing in silence
for some time, he began again to speak of the gibes of the Alexandrians.
Surrounded as he was by servile favorites, whose superior he was in gifts
and intellect, what had here come under his notice seemed to interest him
above measure.

He desired to know where and from whom the painter had got these
epigrams. But again Alexander declared that he did not know the names of
the authors; that he had found one at the public baths, the second in a
tavern, and the third at a hairdresser's shop. Caesar looked sadly at
the youth's abundant brown curls which had been freshly oiled, and said:
"Hair is like the other good gifts of life. It remains fine only with
the healthy. You, happy rascal, hardly know what sickness means!" Then
again he sat staring in silence, till he suddenly started up and asked
Alexander, as Philostratus had yesterday asked Melissa:

"Do you and your sister belong to the Christians?"

When he vehemently denied it, Caracalla went on: "And yet these epigrams
show plainly enough how the Alexandrians feel toward me. Melissa, too,