“I am hardly likely to adopt that explanation, believing as I do in the eternity of those gods by whose worship Rome has grown so great. The story is true, let the meaning be what it may,” added Crispus in a tone whose sharpness deterred Theomantes from making any further comment. CHAPTER III THE QUEEN OF BEAUTY Now, while telling his story, Crispus had become suddenly alive to the presence of a very beautiful girl sitting at an adjoining triclinium. It was not so much her beauty, however, that attracted him as the attention she had paid to his words. She was by far the keenest and most attentive of his listeners, seeming to hang breathless upon his lips during the whole recital; of all the assembly, she seemed to be the only person to receive the story with pleasure. “Rufus,” whispered he, “who is that girl with the lovely golden tresses? To the left of us--on the next triclinium?” Rufus turned in leisurely fashion to survey the maid in question. “I know not her name, or who she is. She came hither accompanied by him who reclines beside her. As I see no likeness betwixt the two, I take it he is not her father.” The man referred to was evidently a Hebrew, and distinguished both by his noble features and rich attire. “Her father? Not he!” said Tertullus. “That is Josephus, a Jew, and yon damsel, I’ll swear, is no Jewess. There is a grace and beauty about her that is quite Ionic.” “Who is this Josephus?” asked Crispus. “He is a priest of the first of the twenty-four courses,” replied Tertullus, “and a rabbi so wondrously wise from his cradle upwards that when he was only fourteen, aged priests and venerable sanhedrists would consult him on points of the law too hard for their own understanding.” “What’s your authority for that story?” said Rufus dryly. “The best authority--his own.[3] He hath told me so many a time. At the mature age of seventeen he had exhausted the whole course of philosophy, and had decided that Pharisaism is the road to heaven. But though a Pharisee, he cultivates Grecian literature, has literary aspirations, and is said to be writing at the present time a treatise that shall prove us Greeks and Romans to be in the matter of antiquity mere children of yesterday when compared with the Jews.”