The centurion bowed in silence and obeyed. Caracalla then went up to the
prisoner, and dragging him, weakly resisting, from the dark back ground
of the room to the window, he asked with a sneer:

"And what are assassins like in Alexandria? Ah, ha! this is not the
face of a hired cut-throat! Only thus do they look whose sharp wit I
will answer with still sharper steel."

"For that answer at least you are not wont to be at a loss," came
contemptuously from the lips of the prisoner.

The emperor winced as if he had been struck, and then exclaimed

"You may thank your bound hands that I do not instantly return you the
answer you seem to expect of me."

Then turning to his courtiers, he asked if any of them could give him
information as to the name and history of the assassin; but no one
appeared to know him. Even Timotheus, the priest of Serapis, who as head
of the Museum had so often delighted in the piercing intellect of this
youth, and had prophesied a great future for him, was silent, and looked
at him with troubled gaze.

It was the prisoner himself who satisfied Caesar's curiosity.
Glancing round the circle of courtiers, and casting a grateful look
at his priestly patron, he said:

"It would be asking too much of your Roman table-companions that they
should know a philosopher. You may spare yourself the question, Caesar.