their country, and followed by an interpreter and several scribes.
Melissa noticed how one of them, a young warrior with a fair beard
framing his finely molded, heroic face, and thick, curling locks escaping
from beneath his tiara, grasped the hilt of his sword in his sinewy hand,
and how his neighbor, a cautious, elderly man, was endeavoring to calm
him.

Scarcely had they left the antechamber than Adventns called Melissa and
Philostratus to the emperor. Caracalla was seated on a raised throne
of gold and ivory, with bright scarlet cushions. As on the preceding
day, he was magnificently dressed, and wore a laurel wreath on his head.
The lion, who lay chained beside the throne, stirred as he caught sight
of the new-comers, which caused Caracalla to exclaim to Melissa: "You
have stayed away from me so long that my 'Sword of Persia' fails to
recognize you. Were it not more to my taste to show you how dear you are
to me, I could be angry with you, coy bird that you are!"

As Melissa bent respectfully before him, he gazed delighted into her
glowing face, saying, as he turned half to her and half to Philostratus:
"How she blushes! She is ashamed that, though I could get no sleep
during the night, and was tortured by an indescribable restlessness, she
refused to obey my call, although she very well knows that the one remedy
for her sleepless friend lies in her beautiful little hand. Hush, hush!
The high-priest has told me that you did not sleep beneath the same roof
as I. But that only turned my thoughts in the right direction. Child,
child!--See now, Philostratus--the red rose has become a white one. And
how timid she is! Not that it offends me, far from it--it delights me.
--Those flowers, Philostratus! Take them, Melissa; they add less to your
beauty than you to theirs." He seized the splendid roses he had ordered
for her early that morning and fastened the finest in her girdle himself.