There were two circumstances that gave him food for reflection. In the first place, even with the most comprehensive knowledge of all the powers of nature, it was not to be explained how the answer to Lucius Rutilius’s question, which Olbasanus did not know, agreed so exactly with the reply to Hero’s. The second circumstance appeared no less perplexing. If this Olbasanus was really a juggler, who deceived his victims for his own selfish designs, what could have been more opportune than a final compliance with Lucius Rutilius’s wishes? The Chaldean might have imposed any penance on the sorrowing youth, and if he had only wanted money, named a very considerable sum by whose payment to the goddess’s representative the pretended fate could be averted. But there was nothing of the sort. Olbasanus’s goddess persisted, with the inexorable severity of Fate, in the prophecy already made by the writing on the entrails of the victim. This fact told very decidedly in the sorcerer’s favor. What interest could the man be pursuing when, against his better judgment, he destroyed a lover’s hopes, since their restoration undoubtedly promised to be far more profitable to the soothsayer. The youth could find no explanation for these things. One day--about a week after Lucius Rutilius’s departure--he was walking through the avenues of the Campus Martius. Caius had long neglected this afternoon exercise of several hours before dinner; now, when his head was burning from the constant restlessness of his excited thoughts, he had resumed the old custom, and to-day, for the fourth time, set out on his usual walk to the so-called Septae, the place where the ancient assemblies of the people were held, past the spreading boughs of the double row of maples, whose rustling foliage already began to assume the brilliant hues of autumn.