even encouraged him to give the reins to his righteous anger. He, if any
one, was in the habit of being moderate in all things, if only as a good
example to his sons; and he had proved in many a Dionysiac feast that
the god could not easily overpower him. The amount of wine he had drunk
to-day would generally have had no more effect upon him than water, and
yet he had felt now and then as if he were drunken, and the whole festal
hall turned round with him. Even now he would be quite incapable of
walking forward in a given straight line.

With the exclamation, "Such is life!--a few hours ago on the rowing-
bench, and fighting with the brander of the galleys for trying to brand
me with the slave-mark, and now one of the greatest among the great!"
he closed his tale, for a glance through the window showed him that time
pressed.

With strange bashfulness he then gazed at a ring upon his right hand, and
said hesitatingly that his own modesty made the avowal difficult to him;
but the fact was, he was not the same man as when he last left the
ladies. By the grace of the emperor he had been made a praetorian.
Caesar had at first wanted to make him a knight; but he esteemed his
Macedonian descent higher than that class, to which too many freed slaves
belonged for his taste. This he had frankly acknowledged, and the
emperor must have considered his objections valid, for he immediately
spoke a few words to the prefect Macrinus, and then told the others to
greet him as senator with the rank of praetorian.

Then indeed he felt as if the seat beneath him were transformed into a
wild steed carrying him away, through sea and sky-wherever it pleased.
He had had to hold tightly to the arm of the couch, and only remembered
that some one--who it was he did not know--had whispered to him to thank