"O Midas; give her the touch! Let all her possessions be gold! Didst advance it to her?"
"If thou wilt remember, it was thy command that I consult thee, first."
"Temperate Jew! To remember a consular suggestion, while a lovely woman, and a Herod at that, besought thee for the contents of thy purse. Oh, thou art an old, old man, Lysimachus!"
The alabarch laughed and frowned the next moment.
"Beshrew the jest! Men who make light of virtue deserve incontinent wives. And there is this one thing apparent, which should make me serious. The Herod is absolutely penniless, and I can not turn that tender woman and her babes out of doors to take the roads of Egypt."
"Rest thee in that small matter. Thou and I can spare her sesterces enough to ship her back to Judea."
Lysimachus was silent for a moment.
"She would not be satisfied," he said at last. "She wants three talents, though she never had afterward a crust of bread. It seems that they permitted a free-born man to pawn himself for that sum in Ptolemais and accepted the money from him!"
"Shade of Herod!" the proconsul exclaimed.
"It seems also that the man is in peril of the authorities, having placed himself in jeopardy to save Agrippa from Herrenius Capito, who had run Agrippa to earth for a debt he owes to Cæsar—"