“I surrender,” said the captive, perfectly at his ease; “long life to the Emperor!” He lifted the lamp to my face and burst into laughter. “May I have a Roman falchion through me,” said he, “but I think we were born under the same planet. By all the food that has entered my lips this day, I took your highness for a thief, and, pardon the word, for a Roman one. I have been running after you the whole day and night.” He confined to talk and writhe, with a kind of mad merriment. I could not obtain an answer to my questions, of what led him there, how he could guide us out of the forest, or what news he brought from the procurator. He less walked than danced before me through the thickets, as our scene with Florus recurred to his fantastic mind. [Sidenote: The Physician] “Never was trick so capital as your escape,” he exclaimed. “I would have given an eye or an arm, things rather an impediment to a beggar, I allow; but it would have been worth a kingdom to see, as I saw, the faces of the whole camp, procurator, officers, troopers, and all, down to the horse-boys, on your slipping through their fingers in such first-rate style. I have done clever things in my time, but never, no never, shall I equal that way of making five thousand men at once look like five thousand fools. I own I thought that you would do something brilliant, and it was for that purpose that I tried to draw off the eye of that scoundrel Florus, for, sot as he is, there are not ten in Palestine keener in all points where roguery is concerned. I caught hold of his robe, told him a ready lie of the largest size about a discovery of coin in Jerusalem, and while he was nibbling at the bait I heard the uproar. You were off; I could not help laughing in his illustrious face. He kicked me from him, and foaming with rage, ordered every man and horse out after your highness. But I saw at a glance that you had the game in your own hands. You skimmed away like a bird; an eagle could not have got up that long hill in finer condition. Away you went, bounding from steep to steep, like a stone from a sling; you cut the air like a shaft. I have seen many a mare in my time, but as for the equal of yours—why a pair of wings would be of no use to her. She is a paragon, a bird of paradise, an ostrich on four legs, a——” I checked his volubility and led him to the rough bedside of Constantius. I could not have found a better auxiliary. He knew every application used in the medicine of the time, and, to give him credit on his own showing, all diseases found in him an enemy worth all the doctors of Asia.