WE must go back a few hours in the progress of our story. At the first grey dawn of the day, which Glaucus had already marked with white, the Egyptian was seated, and alone, on the summit of the lofty and pyramidal tower which flanked his house. A tall parapet around it served as a wall, and , with the height of the and the gloomy trees that girded the , to defy the eyes of curiosity or observation. A table, on which lay a , filled with mystic figures, was before him. On high, the stars waxed dim and faint, and the shades of night melted from the mountain-tops; only above Vesuvius there rested a deep and massy cloud, which for several days past had gathered darker and more solid over its summit. The struggle of night and day was more visible over the broad ocean, which stretched calm, like a gigantic lake, bounded by the circling shores that, covered with vines and , and gleaming here and there with the white walls of sleeping cities, sloped to the scarce waves.  
It was the hour above all others most sacred to the daring science of the Egyptian—the science which would read our changeful destinies in the stars.
 
He had filled his scroll, he had the moment and the sign; and, leaning upon his hand, he had surrendered himself to the thoughts which his calculation excited.
 
'Again do the stars forewarn me! Some danger, then, assuredly awaits me!' said he, slowly; 'some danger, violent and sudden in its nature. The stars wear for me the same mocking menace which, if our chronicles do not , they once wore for Pyrrhus—for him, to strive for all things, to enjoy none—all attacking, nothing gaining—battles without fruit, without triumph, fame without success; at last made craven by his own , and like a dog by a tile from the hand of an old woman! Verily, the stars flatter when they give me a type in this fool of war—when they promise to the ardour of my wisdom the same results as to the madness of his ambition—perpetual exercise—no certain goal!—the Sisyphus task, the mountain and the stone!—the stone, a gloomy image!—it reminds me that I am threatened with somewhat of the same death as the Epirote. Let me look again. "Beware," say the shining prophets, "how thou passest under ancient roofs, or walls, or overhanging cliffs—a stone from above, is charged by the curses of destiny against thee!" And, at no distant date from this, comes the : but I cannot, of a certainty, read the day and hour. Well! if my glass runs low, the sands shall sparkle to the last. Yet, if I escape this peril—ay, if I escape—bright and clear as the moonlight track along the waters glows the rest of my existence. I see honors, happiness, success, shining upon every billow of the dark beneath which I must sink at last. What, then, with such destinies beyond the peril, shall I to the peril? My soul whispers hope, it sweeps beyond the hour, it in the future—its own courage is its fittest . If I were to perish so suddenly and so soon, the shadow of death would darken over me, and I should feel the icy of my . My soul would express, in sadness and in gloom, its forecast of the Orcus. But it smiles—it assures me of deliverance.'
 
As he thus concluded his soliloquy, the Egyptian involuntarily rose. He paced rapidly the narrow space of that star-roofed floor, and, pausing at the parapet, looked again upon the grey and heavens. The chills of the faint dawn came upon his brow, and gradually his mind resumed its natural and collected calm. He withdrew his gaze from the stars, as, one after one, they into the depths of heaven; and his eyes fell over the broad expanse below. Dim in the silenced port of the city rose the masts of the ; along that mart of luxury and of was stilled the hum. No lights, save here and there from before the columns of a temple, or in the of the voiceless , broke the and fluctuating light of the struggling morn. From the heart of the city, so soon to vibrate with a thousand passions, there came no sound: the streams of life circulated not; they lay locked under the ice of sleep. From the huge space of the amphitheatre, with its seats rising one above the other—coiled and round as some monster—rose a thin and ghastly mist, which gathered darker, and more dark, over the foliage that gloomed in its vicinity. The city seemed as, after the awful change of seventeen ages, it seems now to the traveler,—a City of the Dead.'
 
The ocean itself—that and tideless sea—lay scarce less hushed, save that from its deep came, by the distance, a faint and regular , like the breathing of its sleep; and curving far, as with outstretched arms, into the green and beautiful land, it seemed unconsciously to clasp to its breast the cities sloping to its margin—Stabiae, and Herculaneum, and Pompeii—those children and darlings of the deep. 'Ye ,' said the Egyptian, as he over the cities, the boast and flower of Campania; 'ye slumber!—would it were the eternal of death! As ye now—jewels in the crown of empire—so once were the cities of the Nile! Their greatness hath perished from them, they sleep amidst ruins, their palaces and their are tombs, the serpent coils in the grass of their streets, the in their halls. By that mysterious law of Nature, which one to the other, ye have thriven upon their ruins; thou, Rome, hast the glories of Sesostris and Semiramis—thou art a robber, clothing thyself with their spoils! And these—slaves in thy triumph—that I (the last son of forgotten monarchs) survey below, reservoirs of thine all-pervading power and luxury, I curse as I ! The time shall come when Egypt shall be ! when the barbarian's steed shall make his manger in the Golden House of Nero! and thou that hast sown the wind with conquest shalt reap the harvest in the whirlwind of desolation!'
 
As the Egyptian uttered a prediction which fate so fearfully fulfilled, a more solemn and boding image of ill omen never occurred to the dreams of painter or of poet. The morning light, which can pale so even the young cheek of beauty, gave his and stately features almost the colors of the grave, with the dark hair falling massively around them, and the dark robes flowing long and loose, and the arm outstretched from that lofty , and the glittering eyes, fierce with a gladness—half prophet and half fiend!
 
He turned his gaze from the city and the ocean; before him lay the vineyards and meadows of the rich Campania. The gate and walls—ancient, half Pelasgic—of the city, seemed not to bound its extent. and villages stretched on every side up the of Vesuvius, not nearly then so steep or so lofty as at present. For, as Rome itself is built on an volcano, so in similar security the inhabitants of the South tenanted the green and vine-clad places around a volcano whose fires they believed at rest for ever. From the gate stretched the long street of tombs, various in size and architecture, by which, on that side, the city is as yet approached. Above all, rode the cloud-capped summit of the Mountain, with the shadows, now dark, now light, betraying the mossy and ashy rocks, which testified the past , and might have prophesied—but man is blind—that which was to come!
 
Difficult was it then and there to guess the causes why the tradition of the place wore so gloomy and stern a ; why, in those smiling plains, for miles around—to Baiae and Misenum—the poets had imagined the entrance and thresholds of their hell—their Acheron, and their Styx: why, in those Phlegrae, now laughing with the vine, they placed the battles of the gods, and supposed the daring Titans to have sought the victory of heaven—save, indeed, that yet, in yon seared and blasted summit, fancy might think to read the characters of the Olympian thunderbolt.
 
But it was neither the height of the still volcano, nor the fertility of the sloping fields, nor the melancholy avenue of tombs, nor the glittering villas of a polished and people, that now arrested the eye of the Egyptian. On one part of the landscape, the mountain of Vesuvius to the plain in a narrow and uncultivated , broken here and there by jagged crags and copses of wild foliage. At the base of this lay a and unwholesome pool; and the intent gaze of Arbaces caught the outline of some living form moving by the , and stooping ever and anon as if to pluck its rank produce.
 
'Ho!' said he, aloud, 'I have then, another companion in these unworldly night—watches. The witch of Vesuvius is abroad. What! doth she, too, as the imagine—doth she, too, learn the of the great stars? Hath she been uttering magic to the moon, or (as her pauses betoken) foul herbs from the venomous ? Well, I must see this fellow-laborer. Whoever strives to know learns that no human lore is despicable. Despicable only you—ye fat and bloated things—slaves of luxury—sluggards in thought—who, cultivating nothing but the barren sense, dream that its poor soil can produce alike the myrtle and the laurel. No, the wise only can enjoy—to us only true luxury is given, when mind, brain, invention, experience, thought, learning, imagination, all contribute like rivers to the seas of SENSE!—Ione!'
 
As Arbaces uttered that last and charmed word, his thoughts sunk at once into a more deep and profound channel. His steps paused; he took not his eyes from the ground; once or twice he smiled , and then, as he turned from his place of vigil, and sought his couch, he muttered, 'If death frowns so near, I will say at least that I have lived—Ione shall be mine!'
 
The character of Arbaces was one of those intricate and webs, in which even the mind that sat within it was sometimes confused and . In him, the son of a fallen dynasty, the outcast of a sunken people, was that spirit of discontented pride, which ever in one of a sterner mould, who feels himself inexorably shut from the sphere in which his fathers shone, and to which Nature as well as birth no less entitles himself. This sentiment hath no ; it wars with society, it sees enemies in mankind. But with this sentiment did not go its common companion, poverty. Arbaces wealth which equalled that of most of the Roman nobles; and this enabled him to gratify to the utmost the passions which had no in business or ambition. Travelling from clime to clime, and still Rome everywhere, he increased both his of society and his passion for pleasure. He was in a vast prison, which, however, he could fill with the ministers of luxury. He could not escape from the prison, and his only object, therefore, was to give it the character of the palace. The Egyptians, from the earliest time, were to the joys of sense; Arbaces inherited both their appetite for sensuality and the glow of imagination which struck light ............