"Tormenting?" echoed Caesar, disdainfully. "The verses amuse me, and I find them most edifying. That is all. Hand me the tablets." The command was so positive, that Alexander drew out the little diptych, with the remark that painters wrote badly, and that what he had noted down was only intended to aid his memory. The idea that Caesar should hear a few home-truths through him had struck him as pleasant, but now the greatness of the risk was clear to him. He glanced at the scrawled characters, and it occurred to him that he had intended to change the word dwarf in one line to Caesar, and to keep the third and most trenchant epigram from the emperor. The fourth and last was very innocent, and he had meant to read it last, to mollify him. So he did not wish to show the tablets. But, as he was about to take them back, Caracalla snatched them from his hand and read with some difficulty: "Fraternal love was once esteemed A virtue even in the great, And Philadelphos then was deemed A name to grace a potentate. But now the dwarf upon the throne, By murder of his mother's son, As Misadelphos must be known." "Indeed!" murmured Caesar, with a pale face, and then he went on in a low, sullen tone: "Always the same story--my brother, and my small stature. In this town they follow the example of the barbarians, it would seem, who choose the tallest and broadest of their race to be king. If the third epigram has nothing else in it, the shallow wit of your fellow-citizens is simply tedious.--Now, what have we next? Trochaics! Hardly anything new, I fear!--There is the water-jar. I will drink; fill the cup." But Alexander did not immediately obey the command so hastily given; assuring Caesar that he could not possibly read the writing, he was about to take up the tablets. But Caesar laid his hand on them, and said, imperiously: "Drink! Give me the cup." He fixed his eyes on the wax, and with difficulty deciphered the clumsy scrawl in which Alexander had noted down the following lines, which he had heard at the "Elephant" "Since on earth our days are numbered, Ask me not what deeds of horror Stain the hands of fell Tarautas. Ask me of his noble actions, And with one short word I answer, 'None!'-replying to your question With no waste of precious hours."