to what is Rome coming, when a Caesar sits o' nights waiting a turn of fortune to bring him but a beggarly denarius!"
The scion of the Drusi reddened to his brows, but the bystanders broke in upon his reply by surging closer around the table, and shouting, "The Messala! the Messala!"
"Men of the Tiber," Messala continued, wresting a box with the dice in it from a hand near-by, "who is he most favored of the gods? A Roman. Who is he lawgiver of the nations? A Roman. Who is he, by sword right, the universal master?"
The company were of the easily inspired, and the thought was one to which they were born; in a twinkling they snatched the answer from him.
"A Roman, a Roman!" they shouted.
"Yet--yet"--he lingered to catch their ears--"yet there is a better than the best of Rome."
He tossed his patrician head and paused, as if to sting them with his sneer.
"Hear ye?" he asked. "There is a better than the best of Rome."
"Ay--Hercules!" cried one.
"Bacchus!" yelled a satirist.
"Jove--Jove!" thundered the crowd.
"No," Messala answered, "among men."
"Name him, name him!" they demanded.
"I will," he said, the next lull. "He who to the perfection of Rome hath added the perfection of the East; who to the arm of conquest, which is Western, hath also the art needful to the enjoyment of dominion, which is Eastern."
"Perpol! His best is a Roman, after all," some one shouted; and there was a great laugh, and long clapping of hands--an admission that Messala had the advantage.
"In the East" he continued, "we have no gods, only Wine, Women, and Fortune, and the greatest of them is Fortune; wherefore our motto, 'Who dareth what I dare?'--fit for the senate, fit for battle, fittest for him who, seeking the best, challenges the worst."
His voice dropped into an easy, familiar tone, but without relaxing the ascendancy he had gained.
"In the great chest up in the citadel I have five talents coin current in the markets, and here are the receipts for them."
From his tunic he drew a roll of paper, and, flinging it on the table, continued, amidst breathless silence, every eye having him in view fixed on his, every ear listening:
"The sum lies there the measure of what I dare. Who of you dares so much! You are silent. Is it too great? I will strike off one talent. What! still silent? Come, then, throw me once for these three talents--only three; for two; for one--one at least--one for the honor of the river by which you were born--Rome East against Rome West!--Orontes the barbarous against Tiber the sacred!"
He rattled the dice overhead while waiting.
"The Orontes against the Tiber!" he repeated, with an increase of scornful emphasis.
Not a man moved; then he flung the box upon the table and, laughing, took up the receipts.
"Ha, ha, ha! By the Olympian Jove, I know now ye have fortunes to make or to mend; therefore are ye come to Antioch. Ho, Cecilius!"
"Here, Messala!" cried a man behind him; "here am I, perishing in the mob, and begging a drachma to settle with the ragged ferryman. But, Pluto take me! these new ones have not so much as an obolus among them."
The sally provoked a burst of laughter, under which the saloon rang and rang again. Messala alone kept his gravity.
"Go, thou," he said to Cecilius, "to the chamber whence we came, and bid the servants bring the amphorae here, and the cups and goblets. If these our countrymen, looking for fortune, have not purses, by the Syrian Bacchus, I will see if they are not better blessed with stomachs! Haste thee!"
Then he turned to Drusus, with a laugh heard throughout the apartment.
"Ha, ha, my friend! Be thou not offended because I levelled the Caesar in thee down to the denarii. Thou seest I did but use the name to try these fine fledglings of our old Rome. Come, my Drusus, come!" He took up the box again and rattled the dice merrily. "Here, for what sum thou wilt, let us measure fortunes."
The manner was frank, cordial, winsome. Drusus melted in a moment.
"By the Nymphae, yes!" he said, laughing. "I will throw with thee, Messala--for a denarius."
A very boyish person was looking over the table watching the scene. Suddenly Messala turned to him.
"Who art thou?" he asked.
The lad drew back.
"Nay, by Castor! and his brother too! I meant not offence. It is a rule among men, in matters other than dice, to keep the record closest when the deal is least. I have need of a clerk. Wilt thou serve me?"
The young fellow drew his tablets ready to keep the score: the manner was irresistible.
"Hold, Messala, hold!" cried Drusus. "I know not if it be ominous to stay the poised dice with a question; but one occurs to me, and I must ask it though Venus slap me with her girdle."
"Nay, my Drusus, Venus with her girdle off is Venus in love. To thy question--I will make the throw and hold it against mischance. Thus--"
He turned the box upon the table and held it firmly over the dice.
And Drusus asked, "Did you ever see one Quintus Arrius?"
"The duumvir?"
"No--his son?"
"I knew not he had a son."
"Well, it is nothing," Drusus added, indifferently; "only, my Messala, Pollux was not more like Castor than Arrius is like thee."
The remark had the effect of a signal: twenty voices took it up.
"True, true! His eyes--his face," they cried.
"What!" answered one, disgusted. "Messala is a Roman; Arrius is a Jew."
"Thou sayest right," a third exclaimed. "He is a Jew, or Momus lent his mother the wrong mask."
There was promise of a dispute; seeing which, Messala interposed. "The wine is not come, my Drusus; and, as thou seest, I have the freckled Pythias as they were dogs in leash. As to Arrius, I will accept thy opinion of him, so thou tell me more about him."
"Well, be he Jew or Roman--and, by the great god Pan, I say it not in disrespect of thy feelings, my Messala!--this Arrius is handsome and brave and shrewd. The emperor offered him favor and patronage, which he refused. He came up through mystery, and keepeth distance as if he felt himself better or knew himself worse than the rest of us. In the palaestrae he was unmatched; he played with the blue-eyed giants from the Rhine and the hornless bulls of Sarmatia as they were willow wisps. The duumvir left him vastly rich. He has a passion for arms, and thinks of nothing but war. Maxentius
