LITMIR.BIZ

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whimpering about?”

      The girl plucked up courage and going up to the indignant man she said, though more than once interrupted by tears.

      “You must go father—indeed you must. I spoke to the foreman, and he told me coolly and decidedly that the architect was placed here in Caesar’s name, and that if you do not obey him you will at once be superseded in your office. And if that were to happen, if that—O father, father, only think of blind Helios and poor Berenice! Arsinoe and I could earn our bread, but the little ones—the little ones.”

      With these words the girl fell on her knees lifting her hands in entreaty to her obstinate parent. The blood had mounted to the man’s face and eyes, and pressing his hand to his purple forehead he sank back in his chair as if stricken with apoplexy. His daughter sprang up and offered him the cup full of wine and water which was standing on the table; but Keraunus pushed it aside with his hands, and panted out, while he struggled for breath:

      “Supersede me—in my place—turn me out of this palace! Why there, in that ebony trunk, lies the rescript of Euergetes which confers the stewardship of this residence on my ancestor Philip, and as a hereditary dignity in his family. Now Philip’s wife had the honor of being the king’s mistress—or, as some say, his daughter. There lies the document, drawn up in red and black ink on yellow papyrus and ratified with the seal and signature of Euergetes the Second. All the princes of the Lagides have confirmed it, all the Roman prefects have respected it, and now—now.”

      “But father” said the girl interrupting her father, and wringing her hands in despair, “you still hold the place and if you will only give in.”

      “Give in, give in,” shrieked the corpulent steward shaking his fat hands above his blood-shot face. “I will give in—I will not bring you all to misery—for my children’s sake I will allow myself to be ill-treated and down-trodden, I will go—I will go directly. Like the pelican I will feed my children with my heart’s blood. But you ought to know what it costs me, to humiliate myself thus; it is intolerable to me, and my heart is breaking—for the architect, the architect has trampled upon me as if I were his servant; he wished—I heard him with these ears—he shrieked after me a villainous hope that I might be smothered in my own fat—and the physician has told me I may die of apoplexy! Leave me, leave me. I know those Romans are capable of anything. Well—here I am; fetch me my saffron-colored pallium, that I wear in the council, fetch me my gold fillet for my head. I will deck myself like a beast for sacrifice, and I will show him—”

      Not a word of this harangue had escaped the ears of the architect who had been at first indignant and then moved to laughter, and withal it had touched his heart. A sluggish and torpid character was repugnant to his vigorous nature, and the deliberate and indifferent demeanor of the stout steward, on an occasion which had prompted him and all concerned to act as quickly and energetically as possible, had brought words to his lips which he now wished that he had never spoken. It is true that the steward’s false pride had roused his indignation, and who can listen calmly to any comment on a stain on his birth? But the appeal of this miserable father’s daughter had gone to his heart. He pitied the fatuous simpleton whom, with a turn of his hand, he could reduce to beggary, and who had evidently been far more deeply hurt by his words than Pontius had been by what he had overheard, and so he followed the kindly impulse of a noble nature to spare the unfortunate.

      He rapped loudly with his knuckles on the inside of the door-post of the ante-room, coughed loudly, and then said, bowing deeply to the steward on the threshold of the sitting-room:

      “Noble Keraunus—I have come, as beseems me, to pay you my respects. Excuse the lateness of the hour, but you can scarcely imagine how busy I have been since we parted.”

      Keraunus had at first started at the late visitor, then he stared at him in consternation. He now went towards him, stretched out both hands as if suddenly relieved of a nightmare, and a bright expression of such warm and sincere satisfaction overspread his countenance that Pontius wondered how he could have failed to observe what a well-cut face this fat original had.

      “Take a seat at our humble table,” said Keraunus. “Go Selene and call the slaves. Perhaps there is yet a pheasant in the house, a roast fowl or something of the kind—but the hour, it is true, is late.”

      “I am deeply obliged to you,” replied the architect, smiling. “My supper is waiting for me in the hall of the Muses, and I must return to my work-people. I should be grateful to you if you would accompany me. We must consult together as to the lighting of the rooms, and such matters are best discussed over a succulent roast and a flask of wine.”

      “I am quite at your service,” said Keraunus with a bow.

      “I will go on ahead,” said the architect, “but first will you have the goodness to give all that you have in the way of cressets, lights and lamps to the slaves, who, in a few minutes, shall await your orders at your door.”

      When Pontius had departed, Selene exclaimed with a deep sigh

      “Oh! what a fright I have had! I will go now and find the lamps. How terribly it might have ended.”

      “It is well that he should have come,” murmured Keraunus. “Considering his birth and origin, the architect is certainly a well-bred man.”

      CHAPTER V

      Pontius had gone to the steward’s room, with a frowning brow, but it was with a smile on his strongly-marked lips, and a brisk step that he returned to his work-people. The foreman came to meet him with looks of enquiry as he said. “The steward was a little offended and with reason; but now we are capital friends and he will do what he can in the matter of lighting.”

      In the hall of the Muses he paused outside the screen, behind which Pollux was working, and called out:

      “Friend sculptor, listen to me, it is high time to have supper.”

      “It is, indeed,” replied Pollux, “else it will be breakfast.”

      “Then lay aside your tools for a quarter of an hour and help me and the palace-steward to demolish the food that has been sent me.”

      “You will need no second assistant if Keraunus is there. Food melts before him like ice before the sun.”

      “Then come and save him from an overloaded stomach.”

      “Impossible, for I am just now dealing most unmercifully with a bowl full of cabbage and sausages. My mother had cooked that food of the gods and my father has brought it in to his first-born son.”

      “Cabbage and sausages!” repeated the architect, and its tone betrayed that his hungry stomach would fain have made closer acquaintance with the savory mess.

      “Come in here,” continued Pollux, “and be my guest. The cabbage has experienced the process which is impending over this palace—it has been warmed up.”

      “Warmed-up cabbage is better than freshly-cooked, but the fire over which we must try to make this palace enjoyable again, burns too hotly and must be too vigorously stirred. The best things have been all taken out, and cannot be replaced.”

      “Like the sausages, I have fished out of my cabbages,” laughed the sculptor. “After all I cannot invite you to be my guest, for it would be a compliment to this dish if I were now to call it cabbage with sausages. I have worked it like a mine, and now that the vein of sausages is nearly exhausted, little remains but the native soil in which two or three miserable fragments remain as memorials of past wealth. But my mother shall cook you a mess of it before long, and she prepares it with incomparable skill.”

      “A good idea, but you are my guest.”

      “I am replete.”

      “Then come and spice our meal with your good company.”

      “Excuse me, sir; leave me rather here behind my screen. In the first place, I am in a happy vein, and on the right track; I feel that something good will come of this night’s work.”

      “And tomorrow—”

      “Hear me out.”

      “Well.”

      “You

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