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"'Not really, no. I am a Roman,' I answered.

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; " `You look like one of us, the Keltoi,' he said. `You are tall like us, and you walk the way we do. '

"This was a strange statement. For hours I'd been sitting here, barely sipping my wine. I hadn't walked anywhere. But I explained that my mother had been Keltic, but I hadn't known her. My father was a Roman senator.

"`And what is it you write in Greek and Latin?' he asked. `What is it that arouses your passion?'

"I didn't answer right away. He was beginning to intrigue me. But I knew enough at forty to realize that most people you meet in taverns sound interesting for the first few minutes and then begin to weary you beyond endurance.

"`Your slaves say,' he announced gravely, `that you are writing a great history. '

"'Do they?' I answered, a bit stiffly. `And where are my slaves, I wonder!' Again I looked around. Nowhere in sight. Then I conceded to him that it was a history I was writing.

" `And you have been to Egypt,' he said. And his hand spread itself out flat on the table.

"I paused and took another good look at him. There was something otherworldly about him, the way that he sat, the way he used this one hand to gesture. It was the decorum primitive people often have that makes them seem repositors of immense wisdom, when in fact all they possess is immense conviction.

"`Yes,' I said a little warily. `I've been to Egypt. '

"Obviously this exhilarated him. His eyes widened slightly, then narrowed, and he made some little movement with his lips as though speaking to himself.

"'And you know the language and the writing of Egypt?' he asked earnestly, his eyebrows knitting. `You know the cities of Egypt?'

" `The language as it is spoken, yes, I do know it. But if by the writing you mean the old picture writing, no, I can't read it. I don't know anyone who can read it. I've heard that even the old Egyptian priests can't read it. Half the texts they copy they can't decipher. '

"He laughed in the strangest way. I couldn't tell whether this was exciting him or he knew something I didn't know. He appeared to take a deep breath, his nostrils dilating a little. And then his face cooled. He was actually a splendid-looking man.

" `The gods can read it,' he whispered.

"'Well, I wish they'd teach it to me,' I said pleasantly.

"`You do!' he said in an astonished gasp. He leant forward over the table. `Say this again!'

"'I was joking,' I said. 'I only meant I wished I could read the old Egyptian writing. If I could read it, then I could know true things about the people of Egypt, instead of all the nonsense written by the Greek historians. Egypt is a misunderstood land -- I stopped myself. Why was I talking to this man about Egypt?

"`In Egypt there are true gods still,' he said gravely, `gods who have been there forever. Have you been to the very bottom of Egypt?'

"This was a curious way to put it. I told him I had been up the Nile quite far, that I had seen many wonders. `But as for there being true gods,' I said, `I can scarce accept the veracity of gods with the heads of animals -- '

"He shook his head almost a little sadly.

" `The true gods require no statues of them to be erected,' he said. `They have the heads of man and they themselves appear when they choose, and they are living as the crops that come from the earth are living, as all things under the heavens are living, even the stones and the moon itself, which divides time in the great silence of its never changing cycles. '

" `Very likely,' I said under my breath, not wishing to disturb him. So it was zeal, this mixture of cleverness and youthfulness I had perceived in him. I should have known it. And something came back to me from Julius Caesar's writings about Gaul, that the Keltoi had come from Dis Pater, the god of the night. Was this strange creature a believer in these things?

" `There are old gods in Egypt,' he said softly, `and there are old gods in this land for those who know how to worship them. I do not mean in your temples round which merchants sell the animals to defile the altars, and the butchers after sell the meat that is left over. I speak of the proper worship, the proper sacrifice for the god, the one sacrifice to which he will hearken. '

" `Human sacrifice, you mean, don't you?' I said unobtrusively. Caesar had described well enough that practice among the Keltoi, and it rather curdled my blood to think of it. Of course I'd seen ghastly deaths in the arena in Rome, ghastly deaths at the places of execution, but human sacrifice to the gods, that we had not done in centuries. If ever.

"And now I realized what this remarkable man might actually be. A Druid, a member of the ancient priesthood of the Keltoi, whom Caesar had also described, a priesthood so powerful that nothing like it existed, so far as I knew, anywhere in the Empire. But it wasn't supposed to exist in Roman Gaul anymore either.

"Of course the Druids were always described as wearing long white robes. They went into the forests and collected mistletoe off the oak trees with ceremonial sickles. And this man looked more like a farmer, or a soldier. But then what Druid was going to wear his white robes into a waterfront tavem? And it wasn't lawful anymore for the Druids to go about being Druids.

" `Do you really believe in this old worship?' I asked, leaning forward. `Have you yourself been down to the bottom of Egypt?'

"If this was a real live Druid, I had made a marvelous catch, I was thinking. I could get this man to tell me things about the Keltoi that nobody knew. And what on earth did Egypt have to do with it, I wondered?