"While he lived, I lived as he lived, but when he died his sire drove me out of Rome because I had been the living Drusus' shadow and it stung the father that the shadow should live while the sweet substance perished.
"When Drusus died my living died with him, and when I took ship at Puteoli for Palestine I owed three hundred thousand drachmæ to Cæsar and forty tradesmen barked about my heels.
"I had a ruined castle in Idumea. I forgot that I owned it till I was in actual want of shelter. Thither I went. But I was a young man, hopeless, and young hopelessness is harder than the hopelessness of age. I should have put an end to myself, but Cypros, my princess, prevented me by the gentle force of her love and devotion.
"She could not have balked me more thoroughly had she tied me hand and foot. I railed, but while I railed she wrote and sent a messenger, and in a little time an answer came. It was from my brother-in-law, Herod Antipas, who is tetrarch of Galilee. Cypros had besought him to help us. He wrote courteously, or else his scribe, for it is hard to reconcile that letter with the man I met, and begged me come and be his prefect over Tiberias. I went."
The prince paused and when he went on thereafter it seemed as if his account were expurgated.
"At Tyre before an hundred nobles assembled at a feast he twitted me with my poverty and boasted his charity. I tore off the prefect's badge and flung it in his face. And that same night I took the road to Antioch, my princess with me, a babe on either arm.
"The proconsul of Antioch took us in, but there was treachery against me afoot in his household, and I lost his friendship through it. His was my last refuge under roof of mine own rank. I heard recently that Alexander Lysimachus, Alabarch of Alexandria, was in Jerusalem, presenting a Gate to the Temple, and sending my wife and children to Ptolemais, I hastened hither to get a loan of him. But he had departed some days before I came. So here am I as a player of dice to win me money enough to take me back to Ptolemais. But Herrenius Capito, Cæsar's debt-collector, hath found me out."
He looked down at Marsyas' interested face.
"Let me be truthful," he corrected. "I found him. I could have flown him successfully, but for thy close straits. All that would save thee would be the interference of Rome, and I could command it at sacrifice."
Public version of Agrippa's story had enlarged much on certain phases of his adventures which he had curtailed, and these minutiæ had not been to Herod's credit. Yet, though Marsyas knew of these things, his heart stirred with great pity. His was that large nature which turns to the unfortunate whether or not his misfortune be merited. It seemed to him that the prince's fall had been too hapless for comment. But the word here and there, which suggested the prince's intercession in his behalf, stirred him.