The possession--" "Possession!" interrupted Dion in a loud, excited tone.

"The corpse cast ashore by the waves might as well boast possession of the sea!" The dim torchlight was sufficient to reveal Philostratus's pallor to the bystanders.

For a moment the orator seemed to lose his self-control, but he quickly recovered himself, and shouted: "Fellow-citizens, dear friends! I was about to make you witnesses of the misery which a woman, whose wickedness is even greater than her beauty, brought upon an inexperienced--" But he went no further; for his hearers--many of whom knew the brilliant, generous Dion, and Barine, the fair singer at the last Adonis festival--gave the orator tokens of their indignation, which were all the more pitiless because of the pleasure they felt in seeing an expert vanquished by an untrained foe.

The wordy war would not have ended so quickly, however, had not restlessness and alarm taken possession of the crowd.

The shout, "Back! disperse!" ran through the multitude, and directly after the trampling of hoofs and the commands of the leader of a troop of Libyan cavalry were heard.