ment of white silk, over which fell a mantle of the imperial purple, and I noted that on her dazzling bosom hung that necklace of emerald beetles separated by golden shells which she had caused to be copied from my own. On her fair hair that grew low upon her forehead and was parted in the middle, she wore a diadem of gold in which were set emeralds to match the beetles of the necklace. The Augustus was arrayed in the festal garments of a Cæsar, also covered with a purple cloak. He was a heavy-faced and somewhat stupid-looking youth, dark-haired, like his father and uncles, but having large, blue, and not unkindly eyes. From his flushed face I gathered that he had drunk well of the strong Greek wine, and from the sullen look about his mouth that, as was common, he had been quarrelling with his mother.
I stood at the end of the table and saluted first the Empress and then the Emperor.
"Who's this?" he asked, glancing at me.
"General Olaf, of my guard," she answered, "Governor of the State Prison. You remember, you wished me to send for him to settle the point as to which we were arguing."
"Oh! yes. Well, General Olaf, of my mother's guard, have you not been told that you should salute the Augustus before the Augusta?"
"Sire," I answered humbly, "I have heard nothing of that matter, but in the land where I was bred I was taught that if a man and a woman were together I must always bow first to the woman and then to the man."
"Well said," exclaimed the Empress, clapping her hands; but the Emperor answered: "Doubtless your
