CHAPTER X.

The story told by Mastor which had so greatly agitated Pollux and had prompted him to his mad flight was the history of events which had taken place in the steward’s rooms during the hours when the young artist was helping his parents to transfer their household belongings into his sister’s tiny dwelling.  Keraunus was certainly not one of the most cheerful of men, but on the morning when Sabina came to the palace and the gate-keeper was driven from his home, he had worn the aspect of a thoroughly-contented man.

Since visiting Selene the day before he had given himself no farther concern about her.  She was not dangerously ill and was exceptionally well taken care of, and the children did not seem to miss her.  Indeed, he himself did not want her back to-day.  He avoided confessing this to himself it is true, still he felt lighter and freer in the absence of his grave monitor than he had been for a long time.  It would be delightful, he thought, to go on living in this careless manner, alone with Arsinoe and the children, and now and again he rubbed his hands and grinned complacently.  When the old slave-woman brought a large dish full of cakes which he had desired her to buy, and set it down by the side of the children’s porridge, he chuckled so heartily that his fat person shook and swayed; and he had very good reason to be happy in his way, for Plutarch quite early in the morning, had sent a heavy purse of gold pieces for his ivory cup, and a magnificent bunch of roses to Arsinoe; he might give his children a treat, buy himself a solid gold fillet, and dress Arsinoe as finely as though she were the prefect’s favorite daughter.

His vanity was gratified in every particular.

And what a splendid fellow was the slave who now—­with a superbly reverential bow-presented him with a roast chicken and who was to walk behind him in the afternoon to the council-chamber.  The tall Thessalian who marched after the Archidikastes to the Hall of justice, carrying his papers, was hardly grander than his “body-servant.”  He had bought him yesterday at quite a low price.  The well-grown Samian was scarcely thirty years old; he could read and write and was in a position therefore to instruct the children in these arts; nay, he could even play the lute.  His past, to be sure, was not a spotless record, and it was for that reason that he had been sold so cheaply.  He had stolen things on several occasions; but the brands and scars which he bore upon his person were hidden by his new chiton and Keraunus felt in himself the power to cure him of his evil propensities.

After desiring Arsinoe to let nothing he about of any value, for their new house-mate seemed not to be perfectly honest, he answered his daughter’s scruples by saying: