“But the wound, father—­where is the wound?” “Let be, let be,” replied Serapion.  “It is acrid poison, not a dagger or dart that has undone my strength.  And I can depart in peace, for I am no longer needed for anything.  You, Publius, must now take my place with this child, and will do it better than I. Klea, the wife of Publius Scipio!  I indeed have dreamt that such a thing might come to pass, and I always knew, and have said to myself a thousand times that I now say to you my son:  This girl here, this Klea is of a good sort, and worthy only of the noblest.  I give her to you, my son Publius, and now join your hands before me here—­for I have always been like a father to her.”

“That you have indeed,” sobbed Klea.  “And it was no doubt for my sake, and to protect me, that you quitted your retreat, and have met your death.”

“It was fate, it was fate,” stammered the old man.

“The assassins were in ambush for me,” cried Publius, seizing Serapion’s hand, “the murderers who fell on you instead of me.  Once more, where is your wound?”

“My destiny fulfils itself,” replied the recluse.  “No locked-up cell, no physician, no healing herb can avail against the degrees of Fate.  I am dying of a serpent’s sting as it was foretold at my birth; and if I had not gone out to seek Klea a serpent would have slipped into my cage, and have ended my life there.  Give me your hands, my children, for a deadly chill is creeping over me, and its cold hand already touches my heart.”

For a few minutes his voice failed him, and then he said softly: 

“One thing I would fain ask of you.  My little possessions, which were intended for you and Irene, you will now use to bury me.  I do not wish to be burnt, as they did with my father—­no, I should wish to be finely embalmed, and my mummy to be placed with my mother’s.  If indeed we may meet again after death—­and I believe we shall—­I would rather see her once more than any one, for she loved me so much—­and I feel now as if I were a child again, and could throw my arms round her neck.  In another life, perhaps, I may not be the child of misfortune that I have been in this—­in another life—­now it grips my heart—­in another——­Children whatever joys have smiled on me in this, children, it was to you I have owed it—­Klea, to you—­and there is my little Irene too——­”

These were the last words of Serapion the recluse; he fell back with a deep sigh and was dead.  Klea and Publius tenderly closed his faithful eyes.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The unwonted tumult that had broken the stillness of the night had not been unobserved in the Greek Serapeum any more than in the Egyptian temple adjoining the Apis-tombs; but perfect silence once more reigned in the Necropolis, when at last the great gate of the sanctuary of Osiris-Apis was thrown open, and a little troop of priests arranged in a procession came out from it with a vanguard of temple servants, who had been armed with sacrificial knives and axes.