To their left, and looking like a long white ribbon flung out upon the dark water, was the mole of Cæsarea, its far end adorned with the Drusion, a noble tower upon whose top a fire was flaming for the guidance of ships sailing into the harbor. It was not, however, upon the Drusion that Crispus’ eyes were set, but upon Vashti. He longed to know something of her personal history, and the present occasion afforded him an excellent opportunity. The difficulty was how to begin. A patrician of Rome, who had in his time conversed unrestrainedly with princesses and queens, and even with the Empress Poppæa, he actually found himself embarrassed in the presence of this Hebrew maid of seventeen. There was something about her, a spirit of innocence and purity, that marked her off as altogether different from the women of that age. However, having once contrived to begin a conversation he found it easy to maintain it, and ere long he succeeded in eliciting something of her parentage and history. Her mother, it seemed, was a widow, Miriam by name, who had one other child only, an infant. Her father, Hyrcanus, had been a wealthy rabbi of some distinction. (“Clearly Tertullus was wrong,” thought Crispus, “in giving her a Grecian origin.”) Hyrcanus, at his death, an event of the previous year, had by will left his family and effects to the care of his friend Josephus, who thus exercised in relation to Vashti the office of guardian. She and her mother were staying for a brief space only at Cæsarea, their usual home being at Jerusalem, in the street of Millo. Miriam, a strictly orthodox Jewess, had been much opposed to her daughter’s going to a Gentile feast, but had finally yielded to the wishes of Josephus. All this was told, not in her native Syro-Chaldaic, but in Greek; and Crispus did not know which was the more charming, the melody of her voice, or the grace and purity with which she spoke the beautiful language of Hellas. “I learned the Greek from my father,” she explained in answer to Crispus’ question. “He trained me in it from infancy.” Crispus marveled to hear of a Jew with views so unorthodox. “According to my friend Rufus, your rabbis have said, ‘He who teaches his son Greek is as if he reared swine.’” “_Some_ rabbis have said that. But my father belonged to the school of Gamaliel, who taught us to appropriate whatever is good among the Gentiles. The Greek language is good, and Josephus and I are availing ourselves of its treasures.” “In what way?” Instead of giving a direct reply, Vashti asked a seemingly irrelevant question. “How old should you take our nation to be?” As Hebrew history formed no part of the study of Roman youth, Crispus was fain to confess his ignorance. “Well, how old is Rome?” “More than eight hundred years,” he answered with conscious pride. “Which proves your nation, when compared with ours, to be but of yesterday. We Jews were a people a thousand years before Romulus drew his plow along the Palatine.”