What about your brother ?" Melissa briefly and truthfully reported Alexander's heedless crime and the results to her father and Philip.

She ended by beseeching the noble lady with fervent pathos to intercede for her father and brothers.
Meanwhile the senator's keen face had darkened, and the lady Berenike's large eyes, too, were downcast.

She evidently found it hard to come to a decision; and for the moment she was relieved of the necessity, for runners came hurrying up, and the senator hastily desired Melissa to stand aside.
He whispered to his sister-in-law: "It will never do to spoil Caesar's good-humor under your roof for the sake of such people," and Berenike had only time to reply, "I am not afraid of him," when the messenger explained to her that Caesar himself was prevented from coming, but that his representatives, charged with his apologies, were close at hand.
On this Coeranus exclaimed, with a sour smile: "Admit that I am a true prophet! You have to put up with the same treatment that we senators have often suffered under." But the matron scarcely heard him.

She cast her eyes up to heaven with sincere thanksgiving as she murmured with a sigh of relief, "For this mercy the gods be praised!" She unclasped her hands from her heaving bosom, and said to the steward who had followed the messengers: "Caesar will not be present.

Inform your lord, but so that no one else may hear.