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"A revolt?" he asked Macrinus with flashing eyes, and as if he wished the answer to be in the affirmative; but the prefect had hastened to the door with drawn sword. Before he reached it, it was thrown open, and Julius Asper, the legate, burst into the tablinum as if beside himself, crying: "Cursed den of murderers! An attempt on your life, great Caesar; but we have him fast!"
Macrinus had persuaded Caesar to send for the exorciser, to test his arts. Immediately after the performance, however late it might be, the Magian was to be admitted to his presence. Serapion thanked the prefect, and then whispered to him, "I have had a second revelation." "Not here!" exclaimed Macrinus, uneasily, and, leading away his handsome little son, he turned toward the entrance.
Over the sides of the table itself were scrawled in Latin characters these two words, 'Serapis', 'Macrinus'; and about its base lay some pieces of torn, soiled linen, which still retained enough of their former character, both in shape, size, and colour, to convince Vetranio that they had once served as the vestments of a Pagan priest.
Sometimes, when the services of Serapis and the cares attendant on his communications with the Emperor were concluded, Macrinus would lead his pupil into the garden of the priests, and praise him for his docility till his heart throbbed with gratitude and pride.
The presence of this very same man, whom she hated alive, became the object of her longings now that he had ceased to exist; yet not because she desired him to live, but because she was furious at having to return to private life; and this led her to abuse Macrinus also long and bitterly.
How can Macrinus interpret the prophecy that he, who is already on the highest step attainable to us lower mortals, shall rise yet higher?" "We will ask him," said Caesar, indifferently. "But you guard your tongue. It has already cost some men their heads, whom I would gladly see yet among the living. Wishes can not be punished. Who does not wish to stand on the step next above his own?
This was enough for Caracalla. Macrinus was at once to go for the high-priest, and to take care that he took no further steps to conceal Melissa. The slaughterer had ever since daybreak kept secret watch on all the doors of the Serapeum, aided by his comrades, who were to share in the reward, and especially on the stairway leading from the ground floor up to the mystic's galleries.
Macrinus here tried to excuse the spy, by remarking that this zealous official had only tried to set his services in a favorable light. The falsehood could not be approved, but was excusable.
"As you will. I thought only of what I was told by an official of this temple, that the gem-cutter's daughter you know the girl is still alive " But he got no further, for Caesar sprang to his feet, and desired to hear more of this. Macrinus proceeded to relate that a slaughterer in the court of sacrifice had told him that Melissa had been seen last evening, and was somewhere in the Serapeum.
Yes, that must be it; and the grudge that Macrinus now showed against the Alexandrians hastened the pardon which Caesar silently accorded him. Caracalla even said to himself that he had underrated the prefect's intellect, for his eyes flashed and glowed like fire, notwithstanding their smallness, and lending a force to his ignoble face which Caracalla had never noticed before.
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