Approaching his mouth to the other's ear, he whispered,
"I have heard your voice before; you are—?"
"I am," replied the other, composedly eyeing his questioner, "Thrasyllus Magus—Thrasyllus, the student of the stars."
Sejanus smiled, twisted his moustache in his white fingers, and asked,
"Are you sure that you are not the god Hermes? and that you do not sometimes ride of nights, with your horse's hoofs wrapped in cloth?"
It was now the other's turn to start.
"Do you suppose," pursued Sejanus, still in a whisper, "that I had not every stable in Formiæ searched the night you played that trick on the road? I know my master Tiberius's taste for divination and the various deep things you practice. You, then, are the oracle who reveals to him the decrees of fate?"
The exchange of further remarks between these worthy men was here suspended; for Augustus again spoke amid general attention.
"I think," said he, "that we should all now be glad to hear Dionysius the Athenian." An eager hum of assent and approval arose from the jaded and sated, but inquisitive and critical society around.