Berenike was reminded, by the scent that rose up from the girl's hair, of the hours when her own child had thus fondly clung to her.
Her motherly heart had found a new object to love, and exclaiming, "Impossible!" she clasped Melissa more closely.
But Philostratus begged to be heard.

Any plea urged by a third person he declared would only be the ruin of the rash mediator.
"Caracalla," he went on, looking at Melissa, "is terrible in his passions, no one can deny that; but of late severe suffering has made him irritably sensitive, and he insists on the strictest virtue in all who are about his person.

He pays no heed to female beauty, and this sweet child, at any rate, will find many protectors.

He shall know that the high-priest's wife, one of the best of women, keeps an anxious eye on Melissa's fate; and I myself, his mother's friend, shall be at hand.
His passion for revenge, on the other hand, is boundless--no one living can control it; and not even the noble Julia can shield those who provoke it from a cruel end.

If you do not know it, child, I can tell you that he had his brother Geta killed, though he took refuge in the arms of the mother who bore them both.