"It shall," she said in answer and was borne on. Running slaves pushed by him to overtake her chair, and Marsyas knew without looking that the lectica they bore contained Caligula, Caesar's grand-nephew. Agrippina, a young matron in a chair, with a month-old babe in her arms, cast a sidelong glance out of her black eyes at the young man as he approached. Stupid old Claudius, clad in a purple-edged toga and stumbling as he walked, acknowledged the precedence Marsyas gave him with a smile and a greeting. As the young Jew was borne on he did not realize that he had made room for three coming Caesars in the Carinae. After them streamed a great number of patricians in chairs, all proceeding to the races at Tusculum, but Marsyas' bearers turned off the Carinae and began to mount the Esquiline. In a few minutes he was set down before a small, newly-erected house as classic as a Greek temple, as compact as a fortification. The messenger bowed him into the hands of the atriensis, who led him into the vestibule and left him for a moment. Presently, a soft-footed, scantily-clad boy bowed gracefully beside him and begged him to follow. He was led into Junia's atrium. The Roman woman, who had been lounging in a chair at the cancelli, turned languidly, and sprang up in feigned surprise. But honest feeling came into her face as she looked at the changed man that stood before her. "Welcome!" she cried, hastening to meet him. "Would thou wast a god! Perchance there would be despatch about answering prayers!" "Give the gods as welcome a supplication, and the answer would come riding upon Jupiter's thunderbolts!" he responded. She laughed and shook her finger at him. "How hopeless a ruin thou art! A Jew speaking of the gods!" He led her to a chair, and, drawing one up beside her, sat. With bright eyes and a little changing smile she inspected him for a moment. "It is true!" she cried at last. "And I do not like to see it! Thou art indeed changed; no longer the sincere Jew that I met in Alexandria." "A Jew, lady, nevertheless," he answered. "But tell me of thyself, and after that of them that remain in Alexandria." "No: thou canst not avert the preachment I have ready for thee. All thy misdeeds are known to me. When I forewarned thee of the various attributes of Rome, I did not add that Rome talks! I have heard how thou hast put chaplets on thy head, reclined at feasts and upset half a score of merry running courtships in the capital. I see thee, how thou hast put off thy sober habit and got into raiment that makes thee thrice and four times more deadly to the hearts of women. And thou an Essene! Prayerfully hoping to return into the peace and inertia of the salty desert of En-Gadi--some time! Overshadowing the Herod till in very despair he hath taken to racing and left the triclinia and the atria to thee! Fie and for shame, Marsyas!"