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I never expected you should consider me as her necessary cavalier always. As for this evening, I am engaged to Miss Mae, so that settles this matter, but I wish that hereafter you would not get me into such scrapes." Poor Mae! she leaned against Nero or was it Caracalla? surely somebody very hard and cold and cruel, and stopped breathing for a moment.
Philostratus was prepared to accompany the young girl, but Caracalla prevented him by calling: "Lead me to my bath. If it does me good, as I trust it will, I have many things to talk over with you." Melissa did not hear the last words. Gladly and quickly she hurried through the empty, dimly lighted rooms, and found Alexander in a sitting position, half asleep and half awake, with closed eyes.
Old Adventus gazed in astonishment as Arjuna, the emperor's Indian body- slave, disrobed him; for, though Caracalla had entered the apartment with a dark and threatening brow, while his sandals were being unfastened, he laughed to himself, and cried to his old servant with beaming eyes, "To-morrow!" and the chamberlain called down a blessing on the morrow, and on her who was destined to fill the coming years with sunshine for mighty Caesar.
But let us returne to our matter; whosoever shall consider our discourse before, shall perceive that either hatred, or contempt have caus'd the ruine of the afore-named Emperors; and shall know also, from it came that part of them proceeding one way, and part a contrary; yet in any of them the one had a happy success, and the others unhappy: for it was of no availe, but rather hurtful for Pertinax and Alexander, because they were new Princes, to desire to imitate Marcus, who by inheritance came to the Principality: and in like manner it was a wrong to Caracalla, Commodus, and Maximus, to imitate Severus, because none of them were endued with so great valor as to follow his steps therein.
The Pantheon was merely an entrance to the baths of Agrippa. The baths of Trajan covered an area nearly as great. But those of Caracalla surpassed them all in magnificence.
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.
Melissa slowly withdrew her hand, and with drooping eyes answered gently: "You are the emperor, a man... and I..." But Caracalla interrupted her eagerly, and with a clear voice: "Not so, Melissa! Do not you feel, like me, that something else draws us to one another, like what binds a man to his wife? There lies the gem. Look at it once again No, child, no! This resemblance is not mere accident.
But great and beautiful as Rome was in the Augustan era, enriched not only by his own munificence, but by the palaces and baths which were erected by his ministers and courtiers,—the Pantheon, the Baths of Agrippa, the Gardens of Mæcenas,—it was not until other emperors erected the Imperial Palace, the Flavian Amphitheatre, the Forum Trajanum, the Basilica Ulpia, the Temple of Venus and Rome, the Baths of Caracalla, the Arches of Septimius Severus and Trajan, and other wonders, that the city became so astonishing a wonder, with its palaces, theatres, amphitheatres, baths, fountains, bronze statues of emperors and generals, so numerous and so grand, that we are warranted in believing its glories, like its population, surpassed those of both Paris and London combined.
Pythagoras was wise in warning her against torturing her heart. The die was cast. She and Caracalla must go on divergent roads, Her duty now was to fight for her own happiness against any who threatened it, and, above all, against the tyrant who had compelled her, innocent as she was, to hide like a criminal.
Macrinus assured him that if indeed some basest of base wretches had dared to destroy the life of this splendid and faithful king of beasts, the murderer should infallibly be found. But Caracalla screamed in his face: "Found? Dare you speak of finding? Have you even brought me the girl who was hidden here? Have you found her? Where is she? She was seen here and she must be here!"
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