The house was near that magnificent Museum of Alexandria, which, with its famous library, was famous beyond all fame of later times, a fitting treasure-house for its precious manuscripts, and raising a grand white roof against a sky whence rain seldom fell, and turning its noble frontage of pillars and fresco toward the sapphire plain of the tideless Mediterranean. There were no signs of undue luxury about Casca. The furniture of his room was simple, and yet suggestive of grace and elegance. Large piles of manuscripts lay on shelves, ranged on one side of the room, and in another were the toys of a child, heaped up in confusion, as they had evidently been left by some little tired fingers that were weary of play. The room where Casca sat was divided by a portière from an inner chamber, and a murmur might be heard from it of a woman’s voice, singing in low monotonous tones. Below the wide open window there was borne on the soft warm air the sound of chariot wheels passing in the street; the cry of the charioteer, the voice of the newsman, and now and then the low growl, which told that the menagerie was near at hand. The sound which was “the electric touch” that the Poet speaks of, awoke memories in Casca’s heart of that day, so many years before, when the roar of the wild beasts which were to tear the Christians to pieces, floated to his ear as he passed by the Forum to the schools at Rome. He remembered the horror he had always felt at such sounds, and how once when Antonius had insisted on his accompanying him to a great fight with the beasts, he had fainted away, and on recovery had heard the mocking laugh of some of his companions, and the scornful words of Antonius:-- “Bear him hence; he has not the courage of an infant of days.” How dreamlike it all seemed now--the fate of his patron Antonius, his flight, disgraced and dishonoured, from his princely villa; the return for a time to the house of Clœlia; and then the sudden resolve to cast in his lot with the old Jew Ezra, and some of his people, who were bound for Alexandria, learning that trade in precious stones and gold was making the fortune of some of the Jewish race, who were forming a large colony there. His father, Severus, cared little what became of him, and after his mother’s death and his second marriage with Junia he had heard but rarely of him. When he first came to Alexandria, he had to live partly by the office of scribe, but by degrees his scholarship attracted attention, and his quickness in deciphering old manuscripts, and his acquaintance with many languages, for which he had a natural gift, was in his favour. Casca Severus was now held in honour amongst the literary world of Alexandria, holding a post in the magnificent library as custodian and secretary, which had raised him to a position of competence if not affluence.