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There is an outer wall, surrounding the solid structure of Hadrian's tomb; to which there is access by one or two drawbridges; the entrance to the tomb, or castle, not being at the base, but near its central height.
The Roman looked after her, and as she passed by Hadrian's statue, and, as she did so, dropped her head rather lower than before, he roughly ordered her to stop and to tell him why she had averted her face from the statue of Caesar. "Hadrian is our ruler as well as yours," answered the young girl. "I am in haste for there are sick people on the island."
As he drew rein on the crest of a low hill, the desolate brown waste of the Campagna stretched behind him mile upon mile to northward, toward the impenetrable forests of Viterbo, and Rome was at last before him. Before him rose the huge half-ruined walls of Aurelian, battered by Goth and Saracen and imperial Greek; before him towered the fortress of Hadrian's tomb, vast, impregnable, ferocious.
On Hadrian's return to Alexandria from the Thebaid, the poet presented to him a rose-coloured lotus, a flower well known in India, though less common in Egypt than either the blue or white lotus, and assured him that it had sprung out of the blood of the lion slain by his royal javelin at a lion-hunt in Libya.
But there were other and stronger reasons for Hadrian's classing the Christians with the Egyptian astrologers. A Christian heresy was then rising into notice in Egypt in that very form, taking its opinions from the philosophy on which it was engrafted.
He closed his eyes in his bewilderment; then, bidding his master good-night he lighted a torch and by its flaring and doubtful light descended from the tower. Pontius had erected this slight structure expressly for Hadrian's nightly observations.
When he rose next morning Antinous was startled at his aspect, for Hadrian's face and lips were perfectly bloodless. After he had read the remainder of his letters he started, not on foot but on horseback, with Antinous and Mastor for Besa, there to await the rest of the escort. The unchained elements had raged that night with equal fury over the Nile city of Besa.
Hadrian's own horse, Borysthenes, which had had too long a rest, pawed and stamped impatiently in a separate stall, and close at hand the Emperor's retrievers, boar-hounds and harriers were housed in hastily- contrived yards and kennels.
Twenty-five years after that great Easter in Rome, pope Leo, who succeeded Hadrian, whose long pontificate lasted for twenty-three years, was attacked in the streets of Rome and thrown to the ground in the Corso by two nephews of Hadrian's.
"Look at my old woman!" exclaimed Pollux laughing, "but in truth friend, she has good reasons for her ecstasies, I could follow her example." "Hold him fast, hold him fast!" cried Doris. "If he only will let you take his likeness you can show the world a thing worth seeing." "Will you?" interrupted Pollux turning to Hadrian's favorite.