"Certainly."
The woman seized his arm with a vehement grip, and gazed at him.
"Are you ill?" said Paulus, "or—or—out of your mind? Why do you clutch my arm and look at me in that fashion?"
"Too young," said she, rather to herself than to him; "besides, I saw the last act with these eyes. Truly this is wonderful."
Then, like one waking from a dream, she added, "Well, if you want lodgings, you shall have them. You shall have the apartments of this king or pretender—the rooms prepared for the Jew Alexander. Come with me at once." And she unfastened the lamp in the nearest sconce, and led Paulus up the staircase.
Thus the wanderers, Aglais and her daughter, had the queen's room, with their Thracian slave Melana to wait upon them, while the prisoner Paulus had the king's, to which Crispina herself ordered old Philip, the freedman, to carry his luggage.
A few moments later, the innkeeper, who had returned to the more public parts of the house to attend to his usual duties, met Philip laden with parcels in one of the passages, and asked him what he was doing.
"Carrying young Master Paulus's things to his room."
"You can carry," said the innkeeper, "whatever the ladies require to their room; but your young master has no room at all, my man, in this house. And why? For the same reason that will compel you to sleep in one of the lofts over the stables. There is no space for him in the inn. You must make him as comfortable as you can in the hay, just like yourself."
"Humanity is something," muttered Crispus; "but to make a queen one's enemy on that score, without adding a king, where no humane consideration intervenes at all, is enough for a poor innkeeper in a single night. These tetrarchs and rich barbarians can do a poor man an ugly turn. Who knows but he might complain of my house to the emperor, or to one of the consuls, or the prætor, or even the quæstor, and presto! every thing is seized, and I am banished to the Tauric Chersonese, or to Tomos in Scythia, to drink mare's milk with the poet Ovid."[33]