The better he knew the uproarious rabble over whom he ruled, the more evidently was it his duty to watch over Caesar's person as anxiously as a mother over her child, as a miser over his treasure." The high-sounding words flowed with dramatic emphasis, the sentimental speaker adding to their impressiveness by the action of his hands, till it was more than the invalid could bear.

With a pinched smile, he raised himself with difficulty, and interrupted Theocritus with the impatient exclamation, "Still the actor!" "Yes, still!" retorted the favorite, in a hard voice.

"You, however, have been even longer--what you have, indeed, been too long--Prefect of Egypt!" With an angry fling he threw the corner of his toga over his shoulder, and, though his hand shook with rage, the pliant drapery fell in graceful folds over his athletic limbs.

He turned his back on the prefect, and, with the air of a general who has just been crowned with laurels, he stalked through the anteroom and past Philip once more.
The philosopher had told his sister all this in a few sentences.

He now paused in his walk to and fro to answer Melissa's question as to whether this upstart's influence were really great enough to turn so noble and worthy a man out of his office.
"Can you ask ?" said Philip.