Suddenly, a still more excited mob rushed towards a point of the Agora, followed by a rising rumour which drew all the passers-by after it. “What is the matter? what is the matter?” And a shrill voice dominating the tumult shouted over all their heads: “The High-Priest’s wife has been killed!” Violent consternation took possession of the crowd. It was incredible. People refuse to believe that so atrocious a murder could have been committed at the very height of the Aphrodisisæ, bringing down the wrath of the gods upon the town. But the same sentence passed from mouth to mouth in all directions: “The wife of the High-Priest has been killed! The festival at the Temple is put off.” News arrived rapidly. The body had been found, lying on a pink marble seat, in a lonely place, at the summit of the gardens. A long golden pin penetrated her left breast; the wound had not bled; but the assassin had cut off all the young woman’s hair, and had carried away the antique comb of Queen Nitaoucrit. After the first exclamations of anguish, a profound stupor gained the uppermost. The whole multitude grew every minute. The whole town was there: it was a sea of bare heads and women’s hats, an immense herd pouring simultaneously from the streets bathed in blue shade into the dazzling brilliance of the Alexandrian Agora. Such a throng had never been seen since the day when Ptolemy Auleter had been driven from the throne by the partisans of Berenice. And even political revolutions seemed less terrible than this piece of sacrilege, on which the safety of the whole city might depend. The men pushed their way close to the witnesses. They clamoured for further details. They put forth conjectures. Women informed the new arrivals of the theft of the celebrated mirror. The wiseacres swore that these two simultaneous crimes had been committed by the same hand. But who could it be? Courtesans, who had made their offerings the night before for the ensuing year, were fearful lest the goddess should pay no attention to them, and sat sobbing, with their heads buried in their robes. An ancient superstition had it that two such events would be followed by a third and still graver one. The crowd awaited the third. After the mirror and the comb, what had the mysterious robber taken? A stifling atmosphere, inflamed by the south wind and filled with sand dust, weighed upon the motionless crowd. Gradually, as if this human mass were a single being, it was seized with a shivering which grew little by little until it became a panic, and all eyes were turned towards the same point on the horizon. It was at the distant extremity of the long straight avenue which traversed Alexandria from the Canopic gate and led from the Temple to the Agora. There, on the top of the gentle incline, where the road opened upon the sky, a second terror-stricken multitude had just made its appearance and was running down the hill to join the first one. “The courtesans, the sacred courtesans!”