Olbasanus took the gold and wrote three words on one of the numerous strips of parchment which, daintily cut and piled one above another, were lying in a niche in the wall of his room. It was still early--scarcely an hour after sunrise; the conjuror’s labors, as a rule, did not begin until after the so-called _prandium_, or second breakfast, and were most numerous during the evening hours. So he could reply “Will come immediately!”--“for,” he added with courteous phraseology, “Olbasanus knows that he who gives quickly, gives doubly.” Twenty minutes after Olbasanus’s litter, radiant with gold and purple, borne by four coal-black Nubian slaves, stopped in front of Heliodorus’s vestibule. Such visits from the soothsayer and magician to aristocratic Roman ladies were neither unusual nor remarkable, though Olbasanus was somewhat chary of granting the favor. The Chaldean was respectfully received at the door by the chief slave of the atrium, who begged him to excuse the absence of the members of his master’s family; Heliodorus had been detained in Antium for several days by important business, and Hero, his daughter, had gone to rest at a late hour and was still asleep. Olbasanus nodded with the quiet formality of a man accustomed to such phrases, and allowed himself to be conducted to the large sitting-room under the columns of the peristyle, where Lydia, reclining on a brass lounge, awaited him. As he crossed the threshold the young Sicilian rose, greeted him with great embarrassment, and requested him to follow her. Behind the sitting-room was a windowless, oval _exedra_[7] lighted from above--the apartment specially designed for the social chat so greatly prized and enjoyed by the Romans even in later times. Into this cosy private room Lydia conducted the smiling Oriental, who read in her timid confusion assurance of victory won and fresh triumphs for the future. But scarcely had the folding doors closed behind Olbasanus, when from the opposite ones three strong Germans rushed in and seized him as a pack of hounds fall upon a wolf. Spite of his desperate resistance, he was bound; a gag, thrust by the flaxen-haired Frieselanders between his jaws, barely allowed him to breathe. At the same time Caius Bononius and the centurion Philippus entered the _exedra_ by a side door. “Why do you roll your eyes so, conjuror of Hecate?” said Bononius. “It will be an easy matter for the confidant of all the spirits of the Upper and Lower World to burst these bonds asunder and hurl the criminals who have assailed him lifeless on the floor.” Spite of the defiant scorn these words were intended to express, the young man’s voice had trembled. The glances that flashed from under the Oriental’s lashes were so fierce and diabolical, and the memory of the events in the enchanter’s house on the Quirinal so fresh, that Bononius could not without emotion see the conquered man at his feet,--for in the struggle with the slaves Olbasanus had sunk upon his knees.