"They will not eat such as he," observed old Julius Paulinus, and Caesar
nodded approvingly. The Egyptian shuddered, for this imperial nod showed
him by how slender a thread his life hung.

In a flash he reflected whither he might fly if he should fail to find
this hated couple. If, after all, he should discover Melissa alive, so
much the better. Then, he might have been mistaken in identifying the
body; some slave girl might have stolen the bracelet and put it on before
the house was burned down. He knew for a fact that the charred corpse of
which he had spoken was that of a street wench who had rushed among the
foremost into the house of the much-envied imperial favorite--the
traitress--and had met her death in the spreading flames.

Zminis had but a moment to rack his inventive and prudent brain, but he
already had thought of something which might perhaps influence Caesar in
his favor. Of all the Alexandrians, the members of the Museum were those
whom Caracalla hated most. He had been particularly enjoined not to
spare one of them; and in the course of the ride which Caesar, attended
by the armed troopers of Arsinoe, had taken through the streets streaming
with blood, he had stayed longest gazing at the heap of corpses in the
court-yard of the Museum. In the portico, a colonnade copied from the
Stoa at Athens, whither a dozen or so of the philosophers had fled when
attacked, he had even stabbed several with his own hand. The blood on
the sword which Caracalla had dedicated to Serapis had been shed at the
Museum.

The Egyptian had himself led the massacre here, and had seen that it was
thoroughly effectual. The mention of those slaughtered hair-splitters
must, if anything, be likely to mitigate Caesar's wrath; so no sooner had
the applause died away with which the proconsul's jest at his expense had