Agrippa laughed outright. "Jove, but this questioning hath a familiar ring! Surely thou wast sired of a money-lender, Marsyas, else his inquiries would not arise so naturally to thy lips! Will the Alexandrian lend? Of a surety! And even if not, then will my mother's friend, the noble Antonia, Cæsar's sister-in-law. If Cæsar had not been so precipitate and hastened me out of Rome, I should have borrowed the sum of her ten years ago. I have not borrowed of the Alexandrian ere this because I had not the money to carry me thither."
After a pause, Agrippa anticipated a further question and continued.
"The Alexandrian is Alexander Lysimachus, the noblest Jew a generation hath produced. Even Rome, that hath such little use for our blood, waives its ancient judgment against Lysimachus. He is alabarch of the Jews in Alexandria, able as a Roman, just as a Jew, refined as a Greek, versatile as an Alexandrian. I saw him four years ago, here, in Jerusalem, when he brought his wife's remains to bury them on sacred soil. He had with him two sons, one a man, grown, with his father's genius, but without his father's soul; the other a handsome lad of undeveloped character, and a daughter, a veritable sprite for beauty, and a sibyl for wits. I was afraid of her; I, a Herod and a married man, turning forty, was afraid of her! But get me the twenty thousand drachmæ, Marsyas, and thou shall see her—Hercle—a thousand pardons! I forgot that thou art an Essene!"
Marsyas stood silent once more, and Agrippa waited.
"And yet one other thing, my lord," the Essene said finally. "I serve thee no less for love, because I serve thee also for a purpose. Thou wilt not forget to serve me, when thou comest to thine own?"
"I give thee again my much misused word, Marsyas. Believe me, thou hast forced more truths out of me than any ever achieved before. Cypros will make thee her inquisitor when next she suspects me of warmth toward a maiden!"
Marsyas lifted the prince's hand and pressed it to his lips. Without further word, he went out of the chamber and returned to the city.
He sought out the counting-room of Peter the usurer, and found within a commotion and a gathered crowd. The old man himself stood in a steward's place behind a grating of bronze, with lists and coffers about him. Without stood a brown woman, in a strange dress sufficiently rough to establish her state of servitude, and she bore in her hands a sheep-skin bag that seemed to be filled with coins.
About her was a group of men of nationalities so diverse and so evidently perplexed that Marsyas immediately surmised that they had been summoned as interpreters for a stranger whom they could not understand.
The brown woman was passive: the usurer behind his grating in such a state of great excitement and anxiety that moisture stood out on his wrinkled forehead. His eyes were on the sheep-skin bag; evidently the brown woman was bringing him money, and his fear that the treasure would escape made the old man desperate.