boulders, through bushes, up and down hill, often along a gravelly hillside, he saw to it that his chariot would keep right side up no matter how it bounced and tilted and swerved. He made sure that his axle was long, his wheels far apart, and their spokes short, so that his chariot- bed was as low as possible. He was right.
“But, after fighting from chariots was wholly a thing of the past in Italy and chariots were used, as they are used, for racing only, why cling to provisions for obsolete uses?
“A good general thinks of winning victories, not, like the fools I have disgracing me along the Rhine, of avoiding defeats. So a good charioteer ought to think, not of avoiding upsets, but of winning races. Yet all charioteers appear to want their vehicles as low built as possible, with short spoked wheels, wide apart on the ends of a long axle. That makes them feel safer on a short turn, and, so help me Hercules, I hardly blame them, anyhow. Besides, they all want to spraddle their legs apart and set their feet wide, so as to stand firm on the chariot bed, so they want the chariot body made as wide as possible.
“Now I don’t need to plant my feet far apart when I drive. I believe I could drive on one foot and keep my balance. So I hold a broad chariot body is worse than unnecessary. More than that I maintain that the lower the axle is set, the less the team’s strength goes into attaining speed. The lower the axle is set, the more sharply the pole slopes upward from the axle to the yoke-ring; the less of the team’s energy goes into pulling the chariot along, the more of it is wasted, so to speak, on lifting the chariot into the air at every leap forward. The higher the axle is set, the nearer the pole is to being level, the less power is wasted on that upward pull and the more is utilized on the forward pull and goes to produce speed.
“Then again, I maintain that the farther apart the wheels are set the more one drags against the other, not only at the turns, where anyone can see the outer wheel drag on the inner, but at every swerve of the team on the straightaway. All such dragging reduces speed and tires the team with pulling which is energy utterly wasted.
“I hold the ideal racing chariot should have a chariot body as narrow as possible, not much wider than the width of the driver’s hips; should have the wheels as close together as possible, to diminish the drag of one wheel against the other, should have the axle set as high as can be managed.
“All charioteers exclaim that such a chariot tends to overset. So it does. But I never have had an overset and I never expect to overset. I know how to drive and poise myself so as to keep my chariot right side up, and I never think of oversetting, I think of winning my race, and always do.
“Anyhow, here before your eyes, is my new racing chariot and of all the chariots ever made on earth this has the longest wheel-spokes, the highest-set axle, the closest-set wheels and the narrowest chariot body. Now I’m going to try it out and show it off.”
He did to admiration, amid excited acclaims, his four cream-colored mares fairly flying along the straights and taking the turns at a pace which made us hold our breath.
After this thrilling exhibition he came back under the arcade and spoke to me first.
“Hedulio,” he said, “you are one of the most competent horsemasters I ever knew. What do you think of my idea of the best form for a racing chariot?”
“I think,” I said, “that it has all the merits you claim for it, but that not one charioteer in ten thousand could drive in it and avoid an upset, sooner or later, at a turn.”
“Right you are!” he replied, “but I am one charioteer in ten thousand.”
“Say in a hundred thousand,” I ventured to add. “For surely you could not find, among all the professionals in the Empire, any other man to equal you in team-driving.”
He beamed at me.
When we left the Palace Tanno saw me in my litter and insisted on following behind mine in his until he had seen me out of mine and into my own house.
There I had a very brief and very light lunch, Agathemer hovering over me and reminding me of Galen’s orders for my diet, so that I found myself forbidden every viand which I craved and asked for, and limited to the very simple fare which had been prepared for me.
After lunch I went to bed and to sleep.
I woke soon and very wide awake. When I rolled into bed I had felt so utterly done up with the excitement of my interviews with Vedius and Satronius, with the exertion of standing in the Throne-room and through the Emperor’s lecture on chariot design, that I had renounced my intention of calling on Vedia and had resigned myself to postponing my attempt to see her until the morrow.
I woke all feverish energy and restless determination to go to see her at once. Therefore, between the siesta hour and the hour of the bath, I presented myself at Vedia’s mansion.
I was at once ushered into her atrium, where I found myself alone and where I sat waiting some time.
When a maid summoned me into her _tablinum_, I found her alone, seated in her favorite lounging chair, charmingly attired and, I thought, more lovely than I had ever seen her.
“Oh, Caia!” I cried.
She bridled and stared at me haughtily.
“‘Vedia,'” if you please, she said coldly. “You have no manner of right to ‘Caia’ me, Andivius.”
The distant formality of her address, her disdainful tone, the affront of her words, chilled me like a dash of cold water.
“Caia!” I stammered, “Vedia, I mean. What has happened? What is wrong?” For I could not credit that she would be incensed with me because of my involvement in the affray in Vediamnum nor that she would condemn me unheard, especially as Tanno had told me, in the Stadium of the Palace, that he had taken care to call on Vedia, and give her his version of my mishap.
She glowered at me.
“Your effrontery,” she burst out, “amazes me. I am incredulous that I really see you in my home, that you really have the shamelessness to force yourself into my presence! It is an unforgivable affront that you should pretend love for me and aspire to be my husband and all the while be philandering after a freedwoman; but that you should parade yourself on the high road with her all the way from your villa to Rome, with the hussy enthroned in your own travelling carriage, is far worse. That you should get involved in roadside brawls with competitors for the possession of the minx is worse yet. Worst of all that you should advertise by all these doings, to all our world, your infatuation for such a creature and your greater interest in her than in me. I am indignant that I have considered marrying a suitor capable of such vileness, of such fatuity, of such folly.”
I was like a sailboat taken all aback by a sudden change of wind. I could not believe my ears.
“I never took the slightest interest in Marcia,” I protested, “except to keep my uncle from marrying her, after he set her free. She made eyes at me also, of course, for she made eyes at every marriageable man within reach. But I never had anything to do with her, never called on her by myself, never so much as talked to her alone. I went to her dinners, of course. All widowers and bachelors of our district went to her dinners. But her dinners were the pattern of propriety in every way. Your own grandmother’s famous dinners were not more decorous. Except for being a guest, with others, at her dinners, I never was at her villa. I lent my carriage not to her but to her bridegroom, Marcus Martius, a prosperous gentleman of my neighborhood, of whom you have often heard me speak, a friend of my uncle’s and a friend of mine since boyhood. The fights, as Tanno explained to you, had nothing to do with Marcia and her involvement in them was as accidental as mine.”
Vedia did not look a particle mollified.
“You men,” she said, “are all alike. You will philander about your nasty jades. But, at least, when you vow that you love one woman and one only, and use every artifice to induce her to marry you, you should feel it incumbent on you to keep away from such creatures as this Marcia of yours. But you must needs dangle about her and go to her dinners. That was bad enough. But, while wooing me, to arrange a mock marriage for her with a local confederate and then positively bring her to Rome with you was infinitely worse. I am insulted, of course. But, above and beyond your treachery to me, I am insulted at your bungling your clumsy intrigues and flaunting the minx in the face of all the world and setting all fashionable Rome to gossiping about you and your hussy and to wondering how I am going to act about it.
“I’ll show them and you how I am going to act! I’m angry at your double- dealing; at your lies I am furious. I hate you. I hope I’ll never set eyes on you again. The sooner you are gone, the better I’ll like it. And I’ll give orders to ensure your never darkening my doors again!”
I tried to argue with her, to persuade her, to convince her, to induce her to listen to me.
She raged at me.
Dazed, I groped my way to my litter and, once in it, lost consciousness entirely, not in a faint, but in the sleep of total exhaustion.
As I rolled into my litter, feeling utterly unfit to enjoy a bath with any natural associates, I had ordered my bearers to take me home.
There I rested a while, for I waked before I reached home. Then I bathed, ate a simple dinner, alone with Agathemer, and went at once to bed.
CHAPTER VII
A RATHER GOOD DAY
I slept soundly all night but woke at the first appearance of light. I lay abed, my mind milling over my situation, over Vedia’s unexpected jealousy of Marcia, over the absurdity of it, over her illogical but impregnable indignation and over the equally baseless but similarly unalterable hostility of Vedius and Satronius.
I concluded to try again to placate all three. It seemed to me I could recall many omissions and infelicities in what I had said to both magnates, while in dealing with Vedia I seemed to myself to have been tongue-tied and fragmentary.
After the bit of bread and hot mulled wine which I did not crave, but which Agathemer insisted on my taking according to Galen’s orders, I held a brief morning reception. My nine farmer-tenants were all present, all pathetically and touchingly glad to see me again about, even old Chryseros Philargyrus.
They had a petition to prefer, namely, that I should give them permission to leave Rome and return home, jointly and severally, just as soon as they pleased. Ligo Atrior acted as spokesman and said that they had come provided for a month’s stay, as I had ordered, but they felt that they could see all the sights of Rome which would interest them before the month was out, and some sooner than others. Moreover they felt that although they had left their farms in the best of condition and in faithful hands, yet their desire to return home would soon overcome their interest in sight-seeing and would grow more overmastering daily.
I readily accorded what they asked.
Murmex Lucro was there, and his appearance of superhuman strength impressed me even more than on the road, I bade him meet me at the Palace, and instructed him by which entrance to approach it and at what portal and precisely where to take his stand in order that I might not miss him. Agathemer suggested that I detail one of my slaves to act as his guide and I did so.
My salutants disposed of without hurry and to the last man, in spite of Agathemer’s protests, I ordered my litter.
At the Vedian mansion I was refused admission. Agathemer and even I argued and expostulated, but the doorkeeper said he had explicit orders not to admit me, and the four big Nubians flanking the vestibule, two on a side, looked capable of using muscular force on any would-be intruder and appeared eager for a pretext for hurling themselves on me.
I climbed back into my litter.
As my men shouldered it, the doorkeeper or some one of his helpers made the mistake of unchaining the watch-dog at me.
He was a big, short-haired, black and white Aquitanian dog. He flew at the calves of my bearers, snarling, and would have bitten them badly had I not half rolled, half fallen from my litter, almost into his jaws; in fact, not a foot in front of him.
As all such animals always do with me, he checked, cowered, fawned and then exhibited every symptom of recognition, delight and affection. I patted him, pulled his ears, smoothed his spine and climbed back into my litter. The dog took his place under it as naturally as if I had raised him from a puppy and kept neatly underneath it, all the way to the Satronian Mansion.
There, at sight of me, as I descended from my litter, the doorkeeper loosed his big fawn-colored Molossian hound at me. And he came in silence, but his lips wrinkled off his teeth, swift as a lion and looking in fact as big as a yearling lioness and not unlike one in outline and color.
The Aquitanian from under the litter flew at him with a snarl, the Molossian replied with a louder snarl, the two dogs clinched and tore each other, snarling, and hung to each other, worrying and growling and snarling, to the delight of my bearers.
Out of the Satronian mansion poured a small mob of footmen, lackeys and such house-slaves. But not one dared approach the two dogs. At a safe distance they watched the fight.
I seized the dogs, spoke to them, quieted them, separated them and when I ordered them, they lay down side by side under the litter.
I climbed in.
As my bearers shouldered the litter, the Satronian doorkeeper came forward and said truculently:
“That is our dog under your litter.”
“Is he your dog?” I retorted. “Prove it! Take hold of him.”
The doorkeeper tried and the Molossian snarled at him. He called the footmen to help him.
At that somehow, I both lost my temper and felt prankish.
“Chase ’em, Terror,” I called. “Chase ’em, Fury!”
It was a wonder to see the Aquitanian obey, to see the Molossian obey was a portent.
Into the mansion scuttled the doorkeeper, the footmen, the lackeys, the hangers-on, the two dogs barking at their heels.
I called them off in time to forestall any lacerated ankles, and still more marvellously they obeyed instantly, checked, withdrew to under the litter and there paced, side by side, to Vedia’s home.
There, also, I was denied admission, but urbanely, the porter asserting that his mistress was not at home.
While I was questioning the porter, who was becomingly respectful, a bevy of Vedian retainers, house-lackeys and other slaves, overtook me, demanding the return of the Aquitanian watchdog.
“Take him!” I said, “take him if you can!”
The boldest of them approached the dog, calling him by name and wheedlingly. When he was but a yard or so away the dog flew at his throat and almost set his fangs into it, for they snapped together a mere hand’s breadth short.
The fellow recoiled and, when the dog followed like an arrow from a bow, took to his heels, his companions with him, and they ran helter-skelter down the street, the dog pursuing them to the corner of the Carinae, and returning, his tongue hanging out, his tail wagging, with all the demonstrations of a dog who feels he has done his full duty and has earned approbation.
Hardly had he returned when a band of Satronians appeared and a similar scene was enacted, with the Molossian as chief actor.
When the last Satronian had vanished round the corner of the thoroughfare I reentered my litter and we set off for the Palace, both dogs sedately pacing side by side underneath.
At the Palace portal Agathemer had no difficulty in locating Murmex, even in the crowd which packed all approaches to that entrance. I spoke to the centurion on duty at the portal and to the head out-door usher, meaning to arrange that Murmex should be let in among the first when the commonality were admitted after the senators and knights had paid their duty to the Emperor. To my amazement the head usher looked at a list or memorandum which he had in his hand and said:
“You are Andivius Hedulio, are you not? You are to take in with you anybody you please, to the number of ten. Caesar has given special orders about you.” Murmex therefore passed in with me and took up a position in the lower part of the Audience Hall, where I could send a page to summon him if my plans worked out as I hoped.
We were early and the vast public throne-room almost empty. Tanno joined me after I had stood but a short time and not long afterwards the Emperor entered, just as a fair crowd of senators had assembled.
The formal salutation began at once and I noticed that the Emperor said something personal to Vedius and that Vedius stepped out of the line of salutants and took up a position behind the Emperor on his left. Similarly he spoke to Satronius, who similarly took his station behind the Emperor on his right.
When, in the long line of my equals, in an Audience Hall now jammed to the doors, I drew near to the throne, I felt a growing embarrassment at seeing the Emperor flanked by my two enemies. But, when I made my salutation, to my amazement, the Emperor took my hand and leaned over and kissed me as if I had been a senator.
“I love you, Hedulio,” he said, “and I am proud of you. I have heard very laudatory reports of you. My agents all agree in reporting that you have, in very difficult circumstances, done your utmost to avoid giving offence to any of your neighbors in Sabinum, and that, if you have given offense, it was not your fault. They also agree in reporting that, mild and peaceful as you are by disposition, you know how to defend yourself when attacked, that you are not only a bold and resolute man in a tight place, but resourceful and prompt, a hard and quick hitter, and what is more, a past master at quarter-staff play. I love brave men and good fighters. I commend you.”
He turned ironically to Vedius and asked:
“Did you miss any part of what I have just said to Andivius? I meant you to hear every word of it.”
Vedius, his mean face lead-gray, bowed and said:
“Your Majesty was completely audible.”
Then Commodus similarly questioned Satronius. He, his big face brick-red, his eyes popping out, seemed half strangled by his efforts to speak.
“I could hear it all,” he managed to say.
“You two stand facing me,” Commodus commanded. “Stand on either side of Andivius.”
They so placed themselves with a very bad grace.
The Emperor raised his voice.
“Come near, all you senators,” he commanded. “I want all of you to hear what I am about to say and to be witnesses to it.”
Everybody, senators, knights and commoners crowded as close to the throne as etiquette and the ushers would allow.
“Now listen to me,” spoke Commodus. “You know I hate all sorts of official business and should greatly prefer to put my entire time and energies on athletics, horsemanship and swordsmanship, archery and other things really worth while. I make no secret of my love for the activities at which I am best and of my detestation of my duties.
“But, just because I hate my duties, it does not follow that I neglect them. A lot of you think I do. I’ll show you you are not always right, nor often right. Just because I surround myself with wrestlers and charioteers and gladiators and other good fellows, not with senile self-styled philosophers, prosy and with unkempt beards and rough cloaks, as my father did, half of you think I am incapable of being serious, or haven’t intellect enough to understand government or sense enough to care for the Empire.
“You are mightily mistaken. I realize the importance of my responsibilities and the magnificence of my opportunities. I hate routine, but I know well the value of our Empire and that I, as Prince of the Republic, [Footnote: See Note A.] have a bigger stake in it than any other citizen of our Republic. I am not wholly absorbed in the joys of practicing feats of strength and skill. I put more time on governing than you think.
“I am autocrat of our world, and I know how to make my influence felt when I choose. I have very positive views about fighting. Fighting has to go on, on the frontiers of the Empire. My army can keep off our foes, but it cannot kill off the Moorish and Arab and Scythian nomads, nor the hordes of the German forests and the Caledonian moors. The Marcomanni and the rest will claw at us. There must be fighting on the frontiers. It is proper that there should be fighting where necessary, on any frontier, and corpses scattered about.
“Also corpses are in place on any arena of any amphitheatre anywhere inside our frontiers; fighting inside amphitheatres is proper and seemly.
“But I will tolerate no fighting inside our frontiers outside the amphitheatres. I’ll not condone any corpses on the pavement of any street or on the road of any highway or byways. I’ll not permit any battles, set- tos, affrays or brawls in towns or villages or on roads. Yon hear me? You hear me, Vedius? You hear me, Satronius? You hear me, all of you?
“Now it so happened that I had heard of your disgraceful Sabine feud, which mars the peace of a whole countryside near Reate, and I had sent a competent and reliable agent with four assistants to investigate and report. For once luck was with me: generally my luck as a ruler is as bad as it is good for me as an athlete. It so happened that my agents had just completed their preliminary investigations and acquainted themselves with general conditions when your idiotic feud broke loose in two abductions of women, one by each side, that put my agents on their mettle. They kept awake. They are no fools. My head man has a keen scent for incipient trouble; he managed to have one of his helpers get among the ambushers in Vediamnum and another among those on your byway, Satronius. Each of these two severally heard all the talk of the ambushers with whom he mingled; so I have had a faithful report of just what the Vedian ambush meant to do to the Satronian convoy they lay in wait for and similarly of the other side. Each was waiting for a sheep; both caught a wildcat. If the men in the ambushes had had any eyes or any sense, no fight would have occurred. As it was they got no more than they deserved. Hedulio was set on without provocation and merely defended himself and his associates as any self- respecting free man would. I have no fault to find with Hedulio. I take you all to witness.
“Now that disposes of what is past. As to the future I shall tolerate no illegalities of any kind anywhere in the City, in Italy or in the Empire. You’ll see. Dr. Commodus will cure this epidemic of lawlessness which afflicts the Republic. You’ll see my agents run down, catch and bring to punishment the ingenious rascals who have been amusing themselves by masquerading as Imperial Messengers, scampering across the landscape for the fun of the thing, eating lavish meals at my cost, running the legs off my best horses, lodging luxuriously in the best bed at every inn they stop at, showing forged papers, or showing none at all, using no other means than effrontery and assurance. I’ll have them stopped. I’ll stop them. And I’ll quell, I’ll squelch this outburst of banditry of which we have too much. I’ll see that my agents hunt down and capture and execute these highwaymen who rob not only rich travellers, but government treasure- convoys, who even rob Imperial Messengers. A pretty state of affairs when my couriers are fair game alike for impostors and robbers. I’ll make the slyest and the boldest quail at the idea of interfering with one of my despatch riders and I’ll exterminate all highwaymen. I’ll have no one swaggering up and down Italy, now in Liguria, now in Apulia, mocking the law and its guardians, looting as he pleases, uncatchable, untraceable, hidden and helped by mountaineers and farm-laborers and farmers, even welcomed secretly in villages and towns, acclaimed as King of the Highwaymen, until songs are made on him and sung even in Rome. He’ll soon decorate a gibbet, impaled there and spiked there too. You’ll see. And still less will I tolerate lawlessness among men of property and position. The past actions of you magnates I dislike. As to the future I may say that my agents were at your morning reception yesterday, Vedius, and heard and reported your covert threats to Hedulio: likewise two were at your house, Satronius, and heard and reported your open threats.
“Now I perfectly understand what you two implied. You threatened Andivius with assassination, if he returned to his estates in Sabinum or if he so much as remained in Rome.
“Beware! Be warned! Take care! I am easy-going enough, but I am Caesar and I’ll brook no trenching on my personal prerogatives or my legal authority. I have the tribunician power for life, I am commissioned thereby to forbid anything in the Republic and to see to it that no magistrate or citizen oversteps the limits of what is permitted him. By your threats to Hedulio you practically arrogate to yourself the right to exile a Roman of equestrian rank. Banishment is a governmental power and a prerogative of Caesar. I’ll have no magnates of such overweening behavior. I am jealous of my prerogatives, more than jealous!
“I know what you intend and what you can accomplish by your henchmen. I comprehend that hundreds of stilettos are being sharpened, up there in the Sabine Hills, and down here in the slums, for a chance at Hedulio.
“Now I can do much by legal authority and more by personal prerogative. Be quick. Pass the word swiftly to all your satellites, here and in Sabinum. Let them all know that if Andivius Hedulio dies by poison or violence or is injured by any weapon, you two at Rome and your brother at Villa Vedia and your son, Satro, at Villa Satronia, will not see two more sunrises. I know how to enforce my will, and well you know that. Your lives are in pawn for his, let all your clansmen know in good time.
“And more: if you dare, either of you, to move against Hedulio in any court at Reate or elsewhere in Sabinum for his participation in the brawls which you fomented and he fell into, I shall see to it that not your influence dominates any trial, but evenhanded justice, jealously watched over by my best legal advisers. You know what that means to you.”
The Emperor spoke with a sustained, white-hot fury and it was comical to watch Satronius and Vedius, as I did by sidelong glances when the Emperor’s eyes were not on my face.
When he stopped, both magnates bowed low and each in turn expressed his loyal submissiveness.
The Emperor dismissed them with a wave of his hand. To me he said:
“That will keep you alive, Hedulio and, I trust, help you to get back into good health. Horrible bore, these small-size local matters; worse, if anything, even, than the maintenance of the Rhine frontier. I loathe all this routine. But my agents serve me pretty well. Besides putting me in touch, with all this feud idiocy they have incidentally informed me that you brought to Rome with you a son of Murmex Frugi, also a nephew of Pacideianus, and a pupil of both, who has come to Rome to try his luck at their former profession. Did you bring him here today? I hoped you would.”
“I did,” I answered, “and thanks to your orders, I was able to pass him in with me. He is in this hall now.” “Fine!” cried the Emperor, “and how about your nine tenants, who stood by you so well in both fights. Did you bring them too?”
“I should never have so presumed,” I stammered, amazed, “It would never have entered my head to ask entry here for such simple rustics. I should have anticipated your wrath had I so far forgot myself.”
“Rustics,” said Commodus, smiling, even grinning, “who can fight as I am told your tenants can fight are always to my mind. Bring them here tomorrow, if you like. I’ll see them in the Palaestra. I’m going there today after this function is finished. Bring your swordsman there. You know the door. I have given orders to admit you in my retinue.”
In the Palaestra Tanno cheerfully presented Murmex to some of his favorite prize-fighters and he stood talking with them, they appraisingly conning the son of Murmex Frugi.
Tanno and I seated ourselves well back on the middle tier of the spectators’ benches and chatted until the Emperor should have returned from his dressing-room and should seem at leisure to notice us.
“You must not be too puffed up at your good luck of today,” Tanno warned me.
“In fact, I advise you to be very wary and to comport yourself most modestly. You know Commodus. It has too often happened that when he has overwhelmed a courtier with favors, his very condescension seems to cause a reaction in his feelings and he becomes insanely suspicious. Respond promptly to all his suggestions, of course, but do not obtrude yourself on his notice. In particular ask no favor of him for a long time to come.”
I thanked him for his advice and assured him that I most heartily agreed with his ideas.
Presently a page summoned me, and Tanno came, too.
Commodus had rid himself of his official robes and was now clad only in an athlete’s tunic and soft-soled shoes. I presented Murmex and the Emperor questioned him, as to his age, his upbringing, his father’s years in retirement at Nersae, as to Pacideianus and put questions about thrusts and parries designed to test his knowledge of fence.
Then he seated himself on his throne on the little dais by the fencing- floor and had Murmex called to him, made him stand by him, and asked his opinion of several pairs of fighters whom he had fence, one pair after the other.
Appearing pleased with the replies he elicited he bade Murmex go with one of the pages, rub down and change into fencing rig. While Murmex was gone he viewed more fencing by young aspirants matched against accredited Palace-school trainers.
When Murmex returned he had him matched with the best of these tiros. But, almost at once, he called to the _lanista_:
“Save that novice! Murmex will kill him, even with that lath sword, if you don’t separate them.”
He then had Murmex pitted against a succession of experts, each better than his predecessor. Murmex acquitted himself so brilliantly that Commodus cried:
“I must try this man myself.”
He stood up and stepped down from the dais. Then he spent some time in selecting a pair of cornel-wood fencing-swords of equal length and weight and of similar balance, repeatedly hefting the sword he had chosen and repeatedly asking Murmex whether he was satisfied with his sword, whether it suited him; and similarly of the choice of shields.
When they faced each other they made as pretty a spectacle as I had ever seen: Murmex stocky, so burly that he did not look tall, square- shouldered, deep-chested, vast of chest-girth, huge in every dimension and yet neither heavy nor slow in his movements; Commodus tall, slender, sinewy, lithe and graceful, quick in every movement and amazingly handsome.
They had made but a few passes when Commodus exclaimed:
“You show your training: it is some fun to fence with you.”
After not many more thrusts and parries he called out:
“Be on your guard! I’m going to attack in earnest.”
There followed a hot burst of sword-play and when both adversaries were out of breath and stepped back and stood panting, Commodus praised Murmex highly.
“You have the best guard I have ever encountered,” he said, “steady-eyed, cautious, wary yet quick too, and always with the threat of attack in your defense. You are a credit to your training.”
When they stepped forward again Commodus commanded:
“Attack now, attack your fiercest and show your quality. I shall not be angry if you land on me, I shall be pleased. Do your utmost!”
After the second bout he said:
“You are most dangerous in attack. At last I have found a man really worth fencing with. You gave me all I could do to protect myself. You are a pearl!”
He looked round at the envious faces of more than two score seasoned professionals and addressed the gathering at large.
“We have here a man who is nephew of Pacideianus and son to Murmex Frugi, trained since infancy by both. No wonder he is a marvel. I have never faced a swordsman who gave me so much trouble to protect myself or who held off my attacks so easily and completely. He is the only man alive, so far as I know, really in my class as a fencer.”
As he was eyeing the assembly to note their manner of receiving this proclamation his expression changed.
“Egnatius!” he called sharply. “Come here!”
Egnatius Capito came forward. Like Tanno and myself he was conspicuous since he was in his toga, most of those present being athletes and clad for practice.
“I did not notice you among your fellow senators at my levee,” said the Emperor.
“I was not there,” Egnatius admitted. “I had a press of clients at my own levee this morning and reached the Palace just in time to hear what you had to say to Vedius and Satronius. I tried to catch your eye as you passed out, but you did not notice me at all.”
“I had rather see you here than in the throne-room,” Commodus said. “I am told that you have let your tongue run entirely too wild in talking of me lately. If I had not been also told that you had had too much wine I should animadvert on your effrontery officially. As it is I prefer to prove you wrong before these experts and gentlemen.”
“Of what have I been accused?” Capito queried, steadily.
“There has been no accusation,” Commodus disclaimed. “But I have been told that, at more than one dinner, you have been fool enough to say that I am only a sham swordsman, that I take a steel sword and face an adversary whose sword has a blade of lead: that it is no wonder that no one scores off me, and that I run up big scores in all my bouts.”
“If I ever said anything like that,” spoke Capito boldly, “I was so drunk that I have no recollection of having said it. And I am a sober man and a light drinker. Also I have never harbored such thoughts unless too drunk to know what I thought or said.”
“You are cold sober now, aren’t you?” Commodus queried.
“Entirely sober,” Egnatius agreed.
“And you are a fencer far above the average?” he pursued.
“I have been told I have no mean skill,” said Capito modestly.
“Such being the case,” said Commodus, “you and I shall fence. Go with the attendants and change into fencing kit. You’ll find all styles and sizes of everything needed in the dressing-rooms. First pick out a pair of cornel-wood swords, entirely to your mind.”
When Capito had selected a pair of swords which suited both him and the Emperor, he went off to change. While he was gone Commodus had the armorer drill a tiny hole near the point of one sword and insert in it one of those thorn-like little steel points which are commonly used on the ends of donkey-goads.
When Capito returned he showed him the two swords. Capito looked up at him questioningly and amazedly.
“The idea is this,” Commodus explained. “I mean to demonstrate my perfect ability to defend myself, as well as my dangerousness in attack. You are to use the sword with the goad point set in it; so that, if you succeed in hitting me, you will tear a long slash in my hide; for I am going to fence with you in my skin only, stark; mother-naked as I was born. I shall use the unaltered sword and you will have on your fencing-tunic, so that if I hit you, it won’t hurt you nearly as much as a hit from you will hurt me.
“If you draw blood from me, I’ll pay you one hundred thousand sesterces: if I fail to lay you out on the pavement, totally insensible, in three bouts, I’ll pay you two hundred thousand sesterces. You can pick any _lanista_ here to judge the fight and tell us when to separate and rest.”
Capito, cool enough, indicated Murmex as referee.
“He’s not a _lanista_,” Commodus objected.
“He’s Frugi’s pupil,” Capito maintained, “and therefore the best _lanista_ here.”
“I agree,” said Commodus, and he called:
“Who’s the physician on duty?”
When the official came forward he said truculently:
“Get your plasters ready and your revivers. You’ll have to attend a man flat on the pavement, insensible and with a bad scalp wound, before much time has passed.”
And actually, though Capito fenced well, he was no match for Commodus.
The bout was worth watching. The adversaries were just the same height and differed little in weight. Capito seemed more compact and steady; Commodus more lithe and agile. Capito was a handsome man and made a fine figure in his scanty, leek-green fencing tunic. Commodus, always vain, of his good looks, delighted in exhibiting himself totally nude, not only because he loved to shock elderly noblemen imbued with old-fashioned ideas of propriety, but also because he rightly thought himself one of the best formed men alive. He was fond of being told that he was like Hercules but, except in the paintings of Zeuxis, Hercules has always been depicted as brawnier and more mature than Commodus was then or ever became, to his last hour. To me he suggested Mercury, especially as he appears in the paintings of Polygnotus, or Apollo, as Apelles depicted him.
Besides the grace and good looks of the two, they fenced very well, Capito correctly and with good judgment, Commodus with amazing dash and originality.
Capito, though bold, was wholly unable to touch Commodus, while Commodus slashed him, even through his tunic, till his blood ran from a dozen scratches. Before the second bout was well joined Capito was felled by a blow on the head, which laid him flat and insensible, bleeding from a terrible scalp wound.
After Capito had been carried off by the attendants, the Emperor, wrapped in an athlete’s blanket, talked a while to Murmex and then went off to bathe, for he bathed many times a day.
Set free, I went out and was helped into my litter. The two dogs were still by it, took their places under it as if they had belonged to me since puppyhood and under it trotted as I returned home. Once home I ate the lunch permitted me and had an hour’s sound, dreamless sleep.
I woke feeling so well that I sent for Agathemer, bade him have my litter ready and told him I was going to the Baths of Titus.
Inevitably Agathemer protested that I was not well enough; naturally I insisted and, of course, I had my way.
As with court levees, I have never been able to take as a matter of course without wonder and admiration, the marvellous spectacle afforded by an assemblage of our nobility and gentry gathered for their afternoon bath in any of our splendid Thermae. Of these I hold the Baths of Titus not only the most magnificent, which is conceded by everybody, but also I hold them the most impressive mass of buildings in Rome, both outside and inside, and surpassing in every respect every other great public building in the city. Most connoisseurs appraise the Temple of Venus and Rome as our capital’s most splendid structure, but I could never bring myself to admit it superior to or even equal to the Baths of Titus. To enter this surpassing building, always congratulating myself on my right to enter the baths and use them; to be one of the courtly throng of fashionable notables resorting to them: I could never take these things as a matter of course.
Nor could I ever take as a matter of course the sight of the bulk of Rome’s nobility, gentlemen and ladies together, thronging the great pools and halls or roaming about the corridors, passage-ways or galleries, all totally nude.
Social convention is an amazing factor in human life. One may say that anything fashionable is accepted and that anything unfashionable is banned. But that does not help one to explain to one’s self the oddity of some social conventions.
Oddest of all our Roman social conventions is the contrast between the insistence on complete concealment of the human figure everywhere else and the universal acceptance of its display at the Thermae.
At home, if receiving guests, on the streets, at a formal dinner, at Palace levees, at the Circus games or in the Amphitheatre, a man must be wrapped up in his toga. Any exposure of too much of the left arm, of either ankle, is hooted at as bad form, is decried as indecent.
So of our ladies, on dinner sofas, on their reclining chairs in their reception rooms, in their homes, in their litters abroad, at the Amphitheatre or at the Circus games, from neck to instep they are muffled up. If one catches a glimpse of a beauty’s ankle as she goes up a stair, one is thrilled, one watches eagerly, one cranes to look.
Yet one encounters the same beauty the same afternoon in a corridor of the Baths of Titus, with nothing on but a net over her elaborate coiffure and the bracelet with the key and number of the locker in which the attendant has put away her clothing and valuables and one not only cannot stare at her, one cannot look at her, not even if she accosts one and lingers for a chat.
I have pondered over this, the most singular of our social conventions, and the most mandatory and inescapable; and the more I ponder the more singular it seems.
Yet it is real, it is a fact. One meets the wives of all one’s friends, the wives of all Rome’s nobility, naked as they were born; they mingle with the men in the swimming pools, in the ante-rooms, in the rest-rooms, everywhere except in the shower-bath cabinets and the rubbing-down rooms; one swims with them, lounges with them, joins groups of chatting gentlemen and ladies, chats, goes off, and all the while one cannot, one simply cannot stare at a nude woman, any more than any of the women ever stares at any man.
It is a social convention. But not the less amazing, although a fact.
One not only cannot scrutinize a woman, one cannot scrutinize a group of women, even at a distance, even all the way across a swimming pool. So, hoping to encounter Vedia in the gathering, I yet could not look for her.
I had met and talked with many of my acquaintances, notably Marcus Martius and his bride Marcia.
Marcia, rosy as the inside of a sea-shell, with her gold hair confined by a net of gold wire, was a bewitching creature, if I had been able to let my eyes dwell on her.
She was as contained and slow spoken and soft-voiced as always, but she was, for her, notably complimentary as to my share in the two fights; thanked me warmly for defending her, declared that she would certainly have been carried off, either as Xantha or Greia, or as a hostage for one or the other, if I had not fought “like both the Dioscuri at once,” as she phrased it.
Martius corroborated her opinion of my services to them and thanked me warmly.
Delayed by chats with friends and acquaintances, held up by distant acquaintances and even by persons hardly known to me by sight, who congratulated me on the Emperor’s public championing of me against my powerful Sabine neighbors, I felt my strength ebbing and sometimes saw a gray blur between my eyes and what I looked at.
I was, in fact, so weak that I nearly fainted when, unseen in the swarm of bathers until he was close to me, I encountered Talponius Pulto, tall, handsome, disdainful, sneering and malignant as usual. From his proximity I escaped as unobtrusively as I could and as promptly.
The cold douche and a swim in the cold pool had revived me. Also, in the cold pool I had encountered Nemestronia, still personable enough at eighty-odd to mingle daily with her social world, as nude as they, and enjoy herself thoroughly. Yet, at her age, she knew she looked better when under water, and spent most of her time in the pools. She and I did some fancy swimming together, while she questioned me about my health.
I did not spend any more time than I could help between the cold pool and the tepid pool; no more at least than importunate acquaintances exacted of me.
In the tepid pool I felt, somehow, weaker and more relaxed than at any time since I had gone out the previous morning. The effect of the Emperor’s favor, the effect of the cold plunge, were wearing off: mind and body were losing tone. I swam languidly, alone, on my back and so swimming found myself about one third of the way from the upper end of the pool and about midway of its width. I was staring up at the panels of the vaulting, relishing the beauty of the color scheme, the gold rosettes brilliant against the deep blue of the soffits, set off by the red of the coffering.
So swimming and staring my eyes roamed downward to the great round-headed coved window above the gallery. The railing of the gallery had a sort of wicket in it, by which bathers could emerge one by one on to the bracket- like platform which overhung the pool at that end, for use as a take-off for a high dive.
Suddenly, on this diving-stand, poised for her dive, outlined against the window behind her, I recognized Vedia; Vedia, my angered sweetheart, rosy as Marcia, more lovely, and nude as Venus rising from the sea.
Seeing her thus, and seeing her thus unexpectedly, woke in me a volcanic outburst of conflicting emotions altogether too much for my weakened condition.
I fainted.
When I came to I felt weak and queer and did not at first open my eyes. I heard subdued voices all about me, as of an interested crowd; I felt all wet, I felt the cold of a wet mosaic pavement under me, but my head and shoulders were pillowed on a support wet indeed, as I was, but soft and warm.
I opened my eyes.
I realized that my head was in Vedia’s lap, for I saw above me her dripping breasts and, higher, her anxious face looking down at mine.
I fainted again.
CHAPTER VIII
THE WATER-GARDEN
Just how long I was entirely unconscious I do not know. For after I began to come to myself at intervals which grew shorter, for periods which grew longer, I was too weak to move a muscle or to utter a syllable. I lay, flaccid, in my big, deep, soft bed, very dimly aware of Occo or of Agathemer hovering about me, generally recalled to consciousness by an eggspoonful of hot spiced wine being forced through my slow-opening lips and teeth.
How many times I was sufficiently conscious to know that I was being fed, but too ill for any thoughts whatever, I cannot conjecture. When I began to have mental feelings the first was one of dazed confusion of mind, of groping to recollect where I was and why and what had last happened to me.
When I recalled my last waking experience I lay bathed in sleepy contentment. I could think connectedly enough to reason out, or my unthinking intuitions presented to me without my thinking, the conviction that, if Vedia could recognize me in a big pool among scores of swimmers, if her perceptions in regard to me were acute enough and quick enough for her and her alone to notice that I had fainted in the water, if she cared enough for me and was sufficiently indifferent to what society might say of her, for her to rescue me and sit down on the pavement of the _tepidarium_ and pillow my wet head on her wet thighs till I showed signs of life, I need not worry about whether Vedia cared for me or not. I was permeated with the conviction that, however difficult it might be to get her to acknowledge it, however great or many might be the obstacles in the way of my marrying her, Vedia loved me almost as consumedly as I loved her.
In this frame of mind I convalesced steadily, if slowly, incurious of the flight of time, of news, of anything; content to get well whenever it should please the gods and confident that happiness, even if long deferred, was certain to follow my recovery.
After I could talk to Occo and Agathemer and seemed to want to ask questions, which both of them discouraged, one morning, on wakening for the second time, after a minute allowance of nourishment and a refreshing nap, I found Galen by my bedside.
He looked me over and asked questions, as physicians invariably do, concerning my bodily sensations. After he seemed satisfied he asked:
“My son, were you ever ill before you were hit on the head in your recent affrays?”
“Never that I remember,” I answered.
“I judge so,” he said. “If you had not been blessed with the very best physique and constitution you would have died in your friend’s litter on the Salarian Highway. Thanks to your general strength and healthiness, and thanks, to some extent, to my care and that of my colleagues, you are alive and on the way to complete, permanent recovery and to long life with good health. But you very nearly committed suicide when you went out and about contrary to my orders. I say all this solemnly, for I want you to remember it. If you disobey again, you will, most likely, be soon buried. If you obey you have every chance of getting so well that you can safely forget that you ever were ill.
“But, until I tell you that you are well, do not forget that you are ill.”
“I shall remember,” I said, “and I shall be scrupulously obedient.”
“Good !” he ejaculated. “I infer that you find life worth living.”
“Very well worth living,” I rejoined devoutly.
“Then listen to me,” he said. “You must remain abed until I tell you to get up; when you first get up, it must be for only an hour or so. You must not attempt to go out until I give you permission. You must not risk eating such meals as you are used to. You must take small amounts of specified foods at stated intervals. Agathemer will see to all that, with Occo to help him. Do you promise to acquiesce?”
“I promise,” I said.
“Remember,” he cautioned me, “that the number, variety and severity of the blows rained on you in your two fights were so great that you were almost beaten to death. You had no bones broken, but the injury to your muscles and ligaments was sufficient to kill a man only ordinarily strong, while the blows affecting your kidneys, liver and other internal organs were in themselves, without the bruising of all your surface, enough to cause death. I had you convalescing promptly and rapidly; you went out and overstrained all your vitalities. Your recklessness almost ended you. You were far nearer death in your relapse than at first, and that is saying a great deal. If you obey me you will certainly recover. If you disobey you will probably kill yourself.”
“I shall take all that to heart,” I said. “I have promised to be docile: I’ll keep my word and obey my slaves as if every day were the Saturnalia.”
“Good!” he exclaimed. “You are getting better.”
He looked me over again and asked:
“Is there anything you want?”
“I want to see Tanno,” I said.
“You shall the day after tomorrow,” he promised, “or perhaps tomorrow, if I find you improving faster than I anticipate.”
Actually, after a brief visit from him the next day, Tanno was ushered into my sick-room.
My first question was about my tenants. Not one such tenant-farmer in a million would ever have a chance of being personally presented to Caesar. They had been awestruck when I told them of their amazing good fortune. They had said almost nothing. But I knew that they were, all nine of them, as nearly rapt into ecstasy as Sabine farmers could be at the prospect of personally saluting Caesar in his Palace, in his Audience Hall on his throne. I had been too inert to worry about anything, but I almost worried at the thought of their disappointment, through my relapse.
Tanno told me that he, knowing the Emperor’s character pretty well, had taken it upon himself to have them passed in with him as the Emperor had ordered, and had himself asked permission to present them and had presented them. The next day, he said, everyone of them had returned home.
I heaved a deep sigh of relief: my tenants and my Sabine Estate were off my mind; I might be entirely easy about all things in Sabinum.
He then told me what a brilliant success Marcia was among the pleasure- loving, novelty-loving, luxurious high-living set in our city society.
“Since the enforcement of the old-fashioned laws relaxed and became a dead letter and some were even repealed,” he said, “not a few men of equestrian rank have married freed-women and such occurrences no longer cause any scandal or much remark. But the results are not generally productive of any social success for the ill-assorted pair.
“I have known a few freedwomen married to men of wealth, and equestrian rank, who gained some vague approximation of social standing among the wives of their husbands’ friends. But Marcia is the first freedwoman I ever knew or heard of to be treated, by everybody and at once, as if she had been freeborn and since birth in her husband’s class. Martius has not brought this about, or aided much; he is a good enough fellow, but he has no social qualities; for all the power he has of attracting friends he might as well be an archaic statue. Marcia has done it all. She’s a wonder.”
Then he told me of Murmex: how he was already rated Rome’s champion swordsman; how the Palace Palaestra was jammed with notables eager to see him fence, how magnates competed for invitations to such exhibitions, how Murmex was overwhelmed with attentions of all kinds from all sorts of people, had had a furnished apartment put at his disposal by one admirer, a litter and bearers presented him by another, already saw his domicile crowded with presents of statuary, paintings, furniture, flowers and all possible gifts, how he was an immediate and brilliant success with all classes, even the populace talking of him, crowding behind his litter, and demanding him for the next public exhibition of gladiators.
That such luck had befallen a man whom I had presented to Court augured well for me, indubitably.
After I had been out of bed an hour or more for several consecutive days Galen said to me:
“You are almost well enough to be about, but not quite. If you go back to your habitual hours of sleep you will fret and fidget indoors, and you are not yet sufficiently recovered to resume your normal life. You need fresh air. I have considered what is best and what is possible. I have talked with your friend Opsitius. Through him I have arranged for you to have short outings in this manner. On fair days if you feel like going out you may call for your litter. In it you must keep the panels closed and the curtains drawn. Agathemer will give your bearers directions. Nemestronia has offered you the use of her lower garden. You are to have it all to yourself, whenever you want it, as long as my directions to Agathemer permit you to remain in it; and you need not remain a moment unless you enjoy being there.”
I understood without asking any questions. Nemestronia’s palace was one of the most desirable, magnificent and spacious abodes in Rome. Her father, who had been accustomed to say that he was too great a man to have to live in a fashionable neighborhood, that any neighborhood in which he settled would thereby become fashionable, had bought a very generous plot of land nearly on the crest of the Viminal Hill and had there built himself a dwelling which was at once noted among the dozen finest private dwellings in the Eternal City. In one respect it was preeminent. From its lofty position it had, down the slope of the hill, a wide view over the city and this view was unobstructed, for below his palace Nemestronius had had laid out six separate gardens, two large and four small. Next the house the ground fell away so sharply that he had been able to create a terraced garden, the only private terraced garden in Rome, extending across the entire rear of his palace and with three terraces, from the uppermost of which the view was almost as good as from the upper windows of the mansion. Below this, each extending along but half the length of the terraces, was a grass-garden, where it was possible to play ball-games, it being a mere expanse of sward shut in by high walls covered with flowering vines; and a formal garden, in the fashionable style. Below the grass- garden was one of similar size, all flower-beds, to supply roses, lilies, violets and other staple blossoms for his banqueting-hall, below the formal garden was one called the wild-garden or shrubbery-garden, like the grass-garden in being covered with sward almost from wall to wall, but unlike it, in that it had four shade trees, no two alike, and many flowering shrubs of all kinds and sizes. Lastly below these two was the water-garden, the same size as the terraced garden, taken up with fountains and pools, and all gay in season, with the flowers which thrive in or beside ponds and pools. It had also eight beautiful lotus trees.
High walls, through which one might pass from one to the other only by gates generally shut fast, separated and enclosed these gardens, for their creator’s intention was to enjoy the peculiar charm of each undistracted by the contrasting charms of the others. From the upper gardens it was possible to see, to some extent, into those lower down the hill; but, from the lower, one could see nothing of those above.
One side of the property was flanked by a street, a mere narrow, walled lane on which no dwelling opened. Along this were posterns in the wall, giving access to or exit from the terrace-garden, the formal-garden, the wild-garden and the water-garden.
I understood at once what I later heard from Agathemer. The water-garden was to be mine for my airings. I was to leave my litter at its postern in the unfrequented lane and reenter my litter there.
There I went next day and revelled in the beauty of the garden, in the sunshine, in the breeze and in the sensations of returning health and strength which inundated me. There I went for some days in succession similarly.
On the eighth day before the Kalends of August Galen came to see me, not early in the morning, but about the bath-hour of the afternoon. He seemed well pleased with his inspection of me and with my answers to his questions.
“You are practically well,” he said, “and much sooner than I anticipated. I am tempted to tell you to return to your normal routine of meals, eating what you please; and to give you permission to resume your usual social activities But I think it better, in a case like yours, to wait a month too long rather than to be a day too soon. So I shall enjoin an adherence to your diet and a continuance of your long rest hours and brief outings for some days yet.”
He had me summon Agathemer and repeated to him much of what he had said to me.
“He might go out at once,” he said, “but we had best be cautious. Limit him to morning outings in Nemestronia’s gardens. He may, however, see friends, one at a time, according to his wishes and your directions. And be particular as to his diet. Give him more of each viand at each feeding. Feed him as soon as he wakes. Then time the feedings two hours apart. Are your _clepsydras_ [Footnote: water-clocks] good?”
“Of the best,” I interjected. “My uncle was a fancier of time-keepers and had one in every room, and no two alike in ornamentation, all beautifully decorated.”
“The ornamentation doesn’t matter,” said Galen, impatiently. “Do they keep time with anything approaching accuracy?”
“As near accuracy,” I said, “as any _clepsydras_ ever made.”
“Well,” he said, “_clepsydras_ always work better when nearly full than when nearly empty. When you feed him have a full _clepsydra_ handy and start it when he begins to eat. Then by it feed him again after two hours. Keep to that interval and to the diet I have enjoined.”
Next day I spent over three hours in Nemestronia’s water-garden, Tanno with me for most of the time. Twice, during the chat, Agathemer brought me a tray with the drink and food enjoined for that hour of the day. Each time I left not a drop or crumb: I was ravenous.
The following morning Agathemer let in to me, in that same garden, Murmex Lucro, who thanked me for my good offices with Commodus and narrated his triumphal progress of professional and social success ever since I had seen him fence with the Emperor.
Agathemer did not permit Murmex to linger long, saying that it was against Galen’s orders. After I was alone and had eaten what he brought I basked and idled happily, thinking of Vedia, entirely unruffled by the fact that I had had no missive or message from her, considering her silence merely discreet and judicious after her spectacular rescue of me in the _Tepidarium_, and confident of seeing her as soon as I was entirely well.
While I was in this mood my hostess came to chat with me. Nemestronia, at eighty-odd, was as dainty and charming an old lady as the sun ever shone on. And as lovable as any woman alive. I loved her dearly, as all Rome loved her dearly, and I ranked myself high among her countless honorary grandsons, for her motherly ways made her seem an honorary grandmother to all young noblemen whom she favored.
After a heart-warming chat she said:
“I must go now, by Galen’s orders. Before I go I want to ask you whether you are coming here tomorrow?”
“Certainly!” I cried, looking about me with delight. “Could there, can there, be in Rome a more Elysian spot in which to feel health being restored to one?”
She beamed at me.
“Be sure to be here,” she said. “You will not regret coming.”
Between naps that afternoon and before I slept that night I soothed myself with the hope that I was, by Nemestronia’s influence, to have an interview with Vedia.
Next morning the weather was beautiful, the sky clear, the air neither too cool nor too warm, the breeze soft and steady. Nemestronia’s water-garden appeared to me even more delightful than the day before. I admired the lotus trees, the water-lily pads in the pools, the jets of the fountains, the bright strips of flowers along the pools, particularly some water- flags or some flowers resembling water-flags.
I was idling in the sun on a cushion which Agathemer had arranged for me on a marble seat against the upper wall, nearly midway of the garden, but in sight of the postern gate by which I had entered. So idling and dreaming day dreams I let my eyes rove languidly about the scene before me. While meditating and staring at the pavement at my feet I heard footsteps on the walk and looked up.
To my amazement I saw Egnatius Capito approaching.
No wonder I was amazed. I knew him but slightly. I should never have thought of asking to see him, as I had asked to be allowed to see several of my semi-intimates. Agathemer had insisted that I postpone seeing them, because an interview with any of them was likely to overtire me. I knew that no one could have entered that garden without Agathemer’s knowledge. I could not conceive how Capito came to be there.
He greeted me formally and asked permission to seat himself beside me. I gave it rather grudgingly.
He asked after my health and I answered only less grudgingly.
“I conjecture,” he said, “that you are surprised to see me here?”
“I am surprised,” I said shortly.
“Will you permit me to explain?” he asked courteously.
I could not be less courteous than he and signified my assent.
“Your secretary,” he said, “is of the opinion that your illness, while caused by your injuries in the affrays into which you were entrapped, was greatly intensified by your chagrin at finding yourself embroiled with both the Vedian and Satronian clans, and he also thinks that brooding over the condition of affairs has delayed your recovery.”
“I assumed all that,” I interrupted, “but I cannot conceive why he has talked to you about it.”
Capito was always ingratiating. He gazed at me reproachfully, gently, winningly.
“If I have your permission,” he said, “I shall explain.”
“Explain!” I cried impatiently.
“Agathemer,” he went on, “has left no stone unturned to find some means for placating both clans and for reconciling you with both. In pursuit of this aim he has been cautious, discreet, tactful and secret. He has covertly tried many plans of approach. It was intimated to him, truly, that I had on foot a scheme which promised to succeed in reconciling both clans with each other and he rightly inferred that I might be able to arrange for reconciling both with you at the same time. I am confident that I can, as I told him when he tentatively approached me and unostentatiously sounded me on this matter. I told him that it was only necessary that I have an interview with you as soon as might be. Believing that an early dissipation of your embroilment would conduce to your quick and complete recovery he arranged for me to meet you as I have.”
While he was saying this my eyes roved about the garden. To my astonishment I saw a man standing against the shut postern door, intently regarding us as we sat on the marble seat conferring. In my half convalescent state I had become used to acquiescence in anything and everything, I was inert mentally and physically and my perceptive faculties dulled and slow as were my intellectual processes. While hearkening to Capito I gazed at the man uncomprehendingly, only half conscious. I thought him a queer-looking fellow to be in Capito’s retinue; he did not look like a slave, but like a free man of the lowest class. I did not recognize him, yet it seemed to me that I should; I did not like the way he looked at us, yet I said nothing. He seemed to see me looking at him, opened the postern, stepped through it and shut it after him. As he went I was shot through with the conviction that I had seen him somewhere before.
“If you have in you,” I said to Capito, “any such supernatural powers as you would need for success in what you aim at, if you have any reasons for anticipating success, Agathemer was fully justified in what he has done. If you can really accomplish what you seem to believe you can accomplish, I shall be grateful to you to the last breath I draw. But I am skeptical. Speak on. Convince me.”
“I must first,” he said, “have your pledge of secrecy for what I am about to say.”
“What sort of secrecy?” I queried, repelled and suspicious.
“If I am to disclose what I wish to disclose,” he said, “you must give me your word not to reveal by word, look, act or silence anything I may make known to you, from your pledge until the termination of our interview.”
I was uneasy, but curious. I gave my pledge as he asked.
He looked about, warily. He leaned closer to me. He spoke in a subdued tone.
“It must be known to you,” he said, “that many of us nobles, many men of equestrian rank, many senators, are gravely anxious concerning the Republic, gravely dissatisfied with the character and behavior, I might say the misbehavior, of our present Prince.”
“I don’t wonder that you pledged me to secrecy,” I blurted out. “You are talking treason.”
“Hear me to the end,” he begged, “and you will find that I am talking not treason but patriotism.”
I grunted and he went on.
“Many of us are of the opinion that the Republic, which was never as prosperous as within the past eighty years, is in grave danger of losing much of its Empire, so gloriously extended by Trajan, so well maintained by his three successors, if it continues to be neglected and mismanaged as it is. To save the commonwealth and retain its provinces we must have a Caesar competent, diligent, discreet and brave; and not one of these epithets can be properly applied to the autocrat now in power. We feel that he must be removed and that there must be substituted for him a ruler who is all that the State needs and has the right to expect.”
“Fine words,” I said. “Masking a conspiracy to assassinate our Emperor.”
He looked shocked and pained.
“Hear me out,” he pleaded.
“I am curious, I confess,” I admitted, “to learn what all this has to do with reconciling Vedius and Satronius and regaining me the good graces of both. I ought to terminate the interview, but I am weak. Go on.”
“Naturally,” he said, “both Vedius and Satronius resent what the Emperor did and said concerning your entanglement in their feud and they are both infuriated at their humiliation and at the effective means he took to tie their hands as far as concerns you and to ensure your safety, as far as they were concerned.”
“Commodus,” I interrupted, “is not altogether a bungler when he gives his mind to the duties of his office.”
“May I go on?” Capito enquired, mildly, even reproachfully and, I might say, irresistibly. He was a born leader of a conspiracy, for few men could be alone with him and not fall under his influence.
“Go on,” I said. “I am consumed with curiosity to discover how their rage at the Emperor could lead to a reconciliation between them.”
“It is not obvious, I admit,” he said, “but when I explain, you will see how naturally, how inevitably a reconciliation might be expected to result.
“You have seen, perhaps often, a peasant or laborer beating his wife?”
“Everybody has,” I replied. “What has that to do with what you were talking of?”
“Be patient!” he pleaded. “You have seen some bystander interfere in such a domestic fracas?”
“Often,” I agreed.
“You have also seen,” he continued, “not only the husband turn on the outsider, but the wife join her spouse in attacking her would-be rescuer, have seen both trounce the interloper and in their mutual help forget their late antagonism.”
“Certainly,” I agreed.
“Well,” he pursued, “human nature, male or female, low-life or high-life, is the same in essence. Vedius and Satronius are so incensed with Caesar for balking their appetite for revenge on you that they are thirsting for revenge on Caesar and ready to forget all their hereditary animosities and join in abasing him. In fact, they have joined the league of patriots of which I am the leader. And they are so bent on their new purpose that they are ready to be hearty friends to anyone sworn as our confederate. I can arrange to obliterate, even to annihilate forever, all trace of enmity between you and either of them, if you will but agree to let your natural inherent patriotism overcome all other feelings in your heart and aid us to abolish the shame of our Republic and to safeguard the Commonwealth and the Empire.”
All this while I had been half listening to him, half occupied in trying to recall where I had seen the man who had stepped through the postern. At this instant, as Capito paused, I suddenly realized that he was the immobile horseman whom we had twice passed in the rain by the roadside the morning I had started from my villa for Rome. His hooked nose was unmistakable.
Somehow this realization, along with the recollection of what Tanno had said of the fellow, woke me to a sense of the danger to which I was exposed by being with Capito and also to a sense of the craziness of his ideas and plans.
I felt my face redden.
“You have said enough!” I cut him short. “I perfectly understand. You think yourself the destined savior of Rome and the deviser of priceless plans for Rome’s future. You are not so much a conspirator as a lunatic. Your schemes are half idiocy, half moonshine. I have pledged you my word to be secret as to what you have told me. My pledge holds if you now keep silent, rise from this seat and walk straight out to your litter, by the same way by which you came from it. If you utter another syllable to me, if you do not rise promptly, if you hesitate about going, if you linger on your path, I’ll call my litter, I’ll go straight to the Palace, I’ll ask for a private audience, I’ll wait till I get one, I’ll tell the Emperor every word you have said to me. If you want protection for yourself from my pledge, leave me. Go!”
He gave one glance at me and went.
CHAPTER IX
THE SQUALL OF THE LEOPARD
When he was gone, when I had seen the postern door shut behind him, I felt suddenly weak and faint. I was amazed to find how exhausted I was left by the ebbing of the hot wave of indignation and rage which had surged through me as I revolted from his absurd and contemptible proposals. I felt flaccid and limp.
At this instant Agathemer brought me a tray of food. My impulse was to burst out at him with reproaches for having, without consulting me, presumed to arrange for me an interview with a man not among my intimates. But I was so enraged that I dreaded the effect on me, in my weakened state, if I let myself go in respect to rebuking my slave. I kept silent and was mildly surprised to find myself tempted by the food. I ate and drank all that was on the tray, and Agathemer vanished noiselessly, without a word.
I sat there, revived by the food and wine, feeling the weakness caused by my rage gradually passing off and meditating on the sudden change in my condition. Before Capito accosted me I had felt perfectly well and was looking forward to resuming my normal life next day, to going to the Palace Levee, to enjoying a bath with my acquaintances at the Thermae of Titus. Since Capito had left me I had felt so overcome that I was ready to look forward to some days yet of strict regimen and isolation.
Thus meditating I was again aware of footsteps on the walk.
I looked up and was more amazed than when I had caught sight of Capito. Approaching me, but a few paces from me, was one of the most detestable bores in Rome, a man whom I sedulously avoided, Faltonius Bambilio. His father, the Pontifex of Vesta, was an offensively and absurdly unctuous and pompous man. His son, who had already held several minor offices in the City Government, had been one of the quaestors the year before, and so was now a senator. But he was, as he always had been, as he remained, a booby. I do not believe that there was any man in Rome I detested so heartily.
He greeted me as if he had a right to my notice and said:
“I was told that Egnatius Capito was in this garden.”
“He was,” I replied curtly, “but he has left it.”
“I certainly am disappointed,” he said, seating himself by me, uninvited. “I particularly wanted to speak to Capito at once.”
“You might find him at his house,” I suggested.
But Bambilio was impervious to suggestions.
“I wanted to talk to him and you together,” he said, “but that can be managed some other time.”
I was about to reply tartly, but I remembered how my irritation with Capito had affected me and recalled Galen’s injunction that I must avoid all causes of excitement and emotion. I held my peace.
Bambilio, as if he had been an intimate and had been specially invited, lolled comfortably on the bench and gazed approvingly about.
“Fine garden, Andivius,” he said. “Fine trees, fine flowers and I say, what a jewel of a slave-girl, eh! Hedulio!”
I could have hit him, I was so incensed at his familiarity, I was already choking with internal rage at Agathemer for having let anyone in to talk to me in that garden, still more at his having done so without consulting me and most of all that after doing so he had not made sure that no one but Capito could pass the postern door. But I almost exploded into voluble wrath when I looked where he indicated, saw a pretty, shapely young woman in the scanty attire of a slave-girl picking flag-flowers into a basket she carried, and recognized Vedia. That Agathemer’s presumption should have spoiled the interview with Vedia which she and Nemestronia had manifestly arranged for us, that it should have exposed Vedia in her undignified disguise to recognition by the greatest ass and blatherskite in the senate, this infuriated me till I felt internally like Aetna or Vesuvius on the verge of eruption.
Vedia, for it was she, had evidently been approaching me circuitously, hoping to be noticed and hailed from afar. Now when she was near enough for not merely a lover but for any acquaintance to recognize her, she looked up at me over her basket as she laid a flower-stalk in it.
Instantly her face flamed, she turned away and went on picking flowers diligently. After she had moved a few steps she sprang into the path and scampered off like a child, her basket swinging, vanishing through a door in the upper wall on my left.
“Neat little piece!” Bambilio commented. “Taking, and every part of her pretty. Fine calves, especially.”
I was by this time in a condition which, had I been old and fat, must have brought on an apoplexy. But my hot rage cooled to an icy haughtiness, and, though it took a weary, tedious long time, I kept my temper and my demeanor, look, tone and word, managed to convey to him, even through the thick armor of his self-conceit, that he was not welcome. He rose, said farewell and waddled off to the postern. As soon as he was outside, more rapidly than I had moved since I was felled in the roadside affray, I walked to that door and made sure that it was bolted.
I was strolling unhurriedly back to the seat I had left and was perhaps half way to it, when I heard, loud and clear, the long-drawn, blood- curdling hunting-squall of Nemestronia’s pet leopard; heard in it more of menace, more of adult ferocity, more of the horrible joy of the power to kill than I had ever heard before.
Instantly I comprehended what had happened. Either Agathemer when he took off my tray or Vedia when she escaped had passed through the wild-garden (probably it had been Vedia, who would not know that the leopard was confined there), and had left a door imperfectly closed. The leopard, which might have been asleep, under the shrubberies and invisible, had roused and had passed through the unfastened door up into the terrace- garden. This was the kind of morning on which Nemestronia would have many visitors, the kind of weather which would tempt them to have their chairs out on the upper terrace, the hour of the morning at which they would be most likely to be out there. The leopard, I instantly inferred, was stalking, not some hare, porker, kid or lamb, but her owner and her owner’s guests.
I disembarrassed myself of my outer garments, threw off my sun-hat, and, clad only in my shoes and tunic, sprinted for the door into the wild- garden, through it, through its upper door, which, as I had forecasted, I found open, and out on the lower terrace. From there I could not see anything on the upper terrace, but, as I cleared the door, I heard again, rising, quavering, sinking, rising, the leopard’s hunting cry from the upper terrace. I sprang up the stair to the middle terrace, and half way up that to the upper; but, when my head was about on a level with the pavement of the walk along the upper terrace, I checked myself and moved a hairs-breadth at a time; for the rescue on which I had come was a delicate task and any quick movement might precipitate the leopard’s killing- spring.
Through the spaces between the yellow Numidian marble balusters I saw what I had anticipated. Partly under the big middle awning, but mostly out in front of it on the walk, were set a score of light chairs. On those furthest out were seated nine ladies: Nemestronia, Vedia, Urgulania, Entedia, Aemilia Prisca, Magnonia, Claudia Ardeana, Semnia, Papiria and Cossonia. They were rigid in their chairs, white with terror and yet afraid to move a muscle. Belly flat on the walk, about twelve paces from them, crouched the leopard, moving forward a paw at a time. As I gained a view of her she emitted a third squall.
I saw that I was in time and felt so relieved that I almost fainted in the revulsion from my agony of anxiety. As I began to move my mind was free enough to wonder how Vedia had found time to change from her slave-girl disguise into a bewitching fashionable toilet. Among those leaders of Roman society, the very pick of Rome’s noblewomen, she showed her best and outshone them all.
I moved evenly and steadily up the steps and along the balustrade till I was past the crouching leopard and then on round till I was in her line of sight and half between her and her victims.
She recognized me at once, the evil switching of her tail ceased, she half rose; she began to purr, a purr that sounded to me as loud as the roar of a water-fall in a gorge; she took a few steps towards me, then, suddenly, she made a peculiar movement hard to describe, something like the curvetting of a mettlesome colt, but characteristic of a leopard and therefore like the movement of no other animal save a leopard or lion or tiger; she leapt daintily clear of the pavement and struck sideways with her forepaws. The antic perfectly expressed playful delight and friendliness.
I recognized her mood and knew that I had not only distracted her from her bloodthirst but had her entire attention. I knew what I must do, but I raged at the ridiculous exhibition which I must make of myself before the most fastidious and conventional of Rome’s noblewomen. Yet, if I was to save them, I must not hesitate. I threw myself flat on my side on the pavement and made clawing motions with my hands and feet, the leopard responded to my suggestion, capered again as before and, when close to me, lay down before me on the pavement and began to paw at me, purring loudly in her throat, now and then snarling softly. She played with me as she had often played before, all her claws sheathed and her paws soft as thistledown; mumbling my hands and forearms in her hot mouth, slavering over them, yet never so much as bruising the skin with her needle-sharp teeth. Yet I seemed to detect a subtle difference in her mood and, from moment to moment, dreaded that she might claw me to ribbons or sink her fangs in my shoulders or face.
All the while she was mouthing, pawing and kicking me I was raging at Agathemer for having put me in a position where I had to make so undignified an exhibition of myself before such an assemblage.
Presently I recognized that alteration in her mood which made it possible for me to rise, take her by the scruff of the neck, and lead her off to her cage.
When I had her inside I realized how hot, sweaty, dusty tousled, rumpled and mussed I was. Her cage was under the vaulted arcade beneath the second terrace. I was, when I shot its bolts, altogether out of sight of Vedia, Nemestronia and the other noble ladies who had been spectators of my tussle with the leopard. I did not want them to see me again in my dishevelled and dirty condition: I sneaked into the house by the passage from the arcade into the cellars and up the scullery stairs, made the first slave I saw escort me to the guest-room I usually occupied when at Nemestronia’s and bade him summon bath-attendants and dressers. Nemestronia had a store-room lined with wardrobes of men’s attire containing every sort of garment of every style and size. I was soon clean and clad as a gentleman should be in a fresh tunic and in the garment I had left in the water-garden, which a footman had fetched for me.
Then I went out on the upper terrace.
There I found the nine ladies, with some maids and waiters. Before the ladies, facing Nemestronia, stood Agathemer; behind and about him Nemestronia’s six big, husky, bull-necked slave-lashers, the two head- lashers with their many-lashed scourges.
I realized at once what had happened. Nemestronia had needed no one to inform her that it was through Agathemer’s negligence or mismanagement that the leopard had escaped from the wild-garden. She had not waited to ask me to investigate the matter and punish my slave. She had, like the great noblewoman she was, assumed my acquiescence and approval and summoned and questioned Agathemer. Before I appeared his answers had convicted him. She did not look round at me as I joined the group and seated myself in a vacant chair on her left, between Vedia and Claudia Ardeana. As I seated myself she gave the order:
“Strip him and give him a hundred lashes!”
Now, then and there I found myself in the most cruel and painful situation I had ever been in my life. Agathemer and I had been playmates almost from our cradles; comrades, cronies, chums all our lives. Neither of us had ever had a brother. Each had been, since infancy, a brother to the other. I could not have loved a real brother any more than I loved Agathemer, nor could he have had more implicit confidence in the goodwill of a blood brother. I was, in fact, as solicitous for Agathemer’s welfare as for my own, and I rejoiced with his joys and mourned with his griefs. I would have done anything to protect him and save him, as he had faithfully and tirelessly nursed and cared for me in my illness.
But I knew that no explanations could ever make Nemestronia understand our mutual relations or accept my views of them; to her a slave was a slave; she felt as unalterable a gulf between free man and slave as between mankind and cattle. I could only let her have her way, though I was inundated with misery at the thought of Agathemer’s approaching agonies. I had been hotly wrathful with him and had meditated, as I dressed, what sort of punishment would befit his fault: now that Nemestronia had ordered him flogged my resentment against him had all oozed out of me and I was filled with sympathy for him and scorn of my cowardice in not protecting him. I glanced at him as the lashers stripped and bound him. He sent back at me a glance which said, as plain as words:
“I am to blame. I know you are sorry for me. But give no sign, I must go through this alone.”
And I had to sit there while the head-lasher flogged him till the pavement on which he lay was all a pool of gore, till his back was in tatters from neck to hips, till he was carried off, insensible, perhaps dead.
Also I had to express my approbation of Nemestronia’s orders, and had to sit there and chat with the ladies, seven of whom were inclined to be facetious over the figure I had cut sprawling on the mosaic walk, tussling with that abominable leopard. They thanked me for saving their lives, or at least, the life of some one of them. But they were sly about my comical appearance while the leopard mauled and tousled me.
Two did not speak.
Vedia was cold and mute and spoke only when she rose, excusing herself to Nemestronia and calling for her litter first of them all.
Nemestronia was so weak from the reaction after her fright and so unwilling to display her weakness that she hardly spoke, limiting herself to the brief words courtesy demanded.
When I reached home I forgot everything else in my solicitude for Agathemer. I not only called for my own physician, but sent urgent messages summoning Galen and Celsianus. Celsianus was affronted at the suggestion that he stoop to prescribe for a slave and incensed at having been called in haste for such a trifle: but Galen, who came in while Celsianus was expressing his indignation, diverted his mind at once by rejoicing that I was sufficiently recovered to take that much interest in one of my slaves. He made haste to see, inspect and assist Agathemer: when he was somewhat relieved and we had left him abed with Occo to watch him and with injunctions that quiet was the best medicine for him, Galen turned to me.
“You have had a shock,” he said, “and a superabundance of excitement. Tell me all about it.”
When I had told him what had happened, omitting only Vedia’s disguise and her presence in the water-garden, he said:
“I certainly should not have prescribed any such excitements and efforts as medicaments for a case like yours. But it sometimes happens that being startled accomplishes more towards a cure than long rest can. Your perturbation of mind and activity of body has cured you. You are, as far as I can judge, well. I am of the opinion that you may safely eat and drink what you like in moderation, rest only as you please and may resume your normal life.”
I was, naturally, much pleased, but had no impulse to resume my habits that day. I kept indoors, denied myself to all visitors, slept long after Galen had left, ate a moderate dinner and went early to bed.
Next day I went through the normal routine of a Roman of my rank. The story of the leopard had been noised about and the husbands of the ladies concerned every one came to salute me at my morning reception and to thank me for my miraculous intervention, as they called it. As six of the eight were senators my atrium had an aspect seldom seen at the reception of a man of equestrian rank.
At the Palace I found the tale of the leopard had reached the ears of the Emperor. He congratulated me, saying:
“You are not only a good fighter, Hedulio, but also incredibly bold and marvellously favored by the gods.”
Tanno was at the Palace to say farewell for the summer, as he was off for Baiae to enjoy the scenery and sea-breezes.
“I envy you,” said Commodus. “I must remain, here many days yet to get rid of the most pressing matters on my crowded files of official papers.”
After the Palace levee was over I went to Vedia’s mansion and tried to see her, but was rebuffed, the porter declaring that, by her physician’s orders, she was denying herself to all visitors.
At home I found Agathemer still suffering terribly, but without fever, with no sign of proud flesh anywhere on his flayed back and not only entirely able to talk to me but eager to do so. We had a long talk on the entire subject of our peculiar relations as a master and slave who were more like brothers. He assured me that I had done just right to act as I had and he begged my pardon for his blunders in arranging to have Capito admitted to talk to me, in arranging it without my permission or even knowledge, in neglecting to guard the outer door of the garden and so admitting Bambilio, and in causing the escape of the leopard. I heartily forgave him, told him to forget all that, that I forgot it all and, on my side, begged his forgiveness for his agonies. He said there was nothing to forgive: that my uncle’s injunctions had compelled my leaving him a slave and the rest had been his fault, not mine.
I told him that I would do anything in my power to make him well, comfortable and happy, except setting him free, from which I was restrained by my uncle’s behests.
He asked to be allowed to return to Villa Andivia as soon as the physicians pronounced him fit to travel.
I agreed: commanded that my travelling carriage, which Marcus Martius had returned to me, should be put in order and prepared for the journey; and consulted Galen, who came of his own accord to see Agathemer two days in succession. On his third visit he gave Agathemer permission to travel by carriage the next day and he accordingly set off for Villa Andivia on the Ides of August.
Each day I had spent most of my afternoon at the Baths of Titus. Each afternoon I had seen Vedia at a distance, but she had always taken pains to avoid me, and one cannot pursue or seem to pursue, a lady in the Thermae.
Each day, also, I had called to see her at her house; each day I had been rebuffed. On the morning of the nineteenth day before the Kalends of September one of the runners brought me a letter. It read:
“Vedia gives greetings to Andivius. If you are well I am well also.”
But this formal opening altered at once to familiar writing.
“You are acting like a silly boy. As things are, both in my cousins’ clan and in that of my late husband, I cannot receive you at my house, and you ought to have sense enough to realize that without being told. Be patient and I shall arrange for an interview with you. Please avoid me at the Baths, as I have you.
“Farewell.”
This letter greatly encouraged me and I felt so elated that I really enjoyed life for the next few days, which were filled up with a reception of my own each morning, a round of receptions to salute magnates, my salutation to the Emperor, a lunch always with some friends, a long nap at home, a lingering afternoon at the Baths of Titus, and a jolly dinner at some friend’s house, for I was invited out twice each day.
On the seventh day before the Kalends of September, as I was on my way to the Palace levee, a runner inconspicuously clad ranged himself alongside my litter and handed me a letter.
It read:
“She whose handwriting he will recognize gives greeting to Hedulio. Take care! Do not let anyone see this letter; take care to seem negligent and uninterested as you read it.
“A conspiracy against the life of Caesar has been detected and reported. Its leader is said to be Egnatius Capito. As some informer, sponsored by Talponius Pulto, claims to have seen you in Capito’s company, you are implicated. Save yourself. Do not return home. Do not go to the Palace, order yourself carried immediately to the Querquetulan Gate. On the way there purchase a raincloak and an umbrella hat and whatever else may be needful for your journey. Outside the _Porta Querquetulana_, in front of Plosurnia’s tavern, you will find one of the fastest horses in Italy, a blood-bay, noticeable for light-blue reins with silver bosses, his saddlecloth light-blue with a silver edge. Descend from your litter in front of the tavern, accost the man holding the horse, say to him:
“‘Is this the leopard-tamer’s horse?’
“He will reply:
“‘It is.’
“Then say:
“‘I am the leopard-tamer.’
“He will then allow one of your spare bearers to take the horse.
“Divest yourself of your toga then, not sooner. Equip yourself for your journey. Mount and order your bearers to take your empty litter home. Follow the Praenestine Highroad till it meets the _Via Labicana_. Then take the first crossroad to the Highroad to Tibur. From Tibur press on to Carseoli. Prom there return to Villa Andivia as you judge best. Provide for yourself thereafter as best you may.
“Farewell.”
I recognized Vedia’s handwriting. I trusted her implicitly. I was far more elated at her concern for me than I was depressed at my impending ruin. Somehow the fact that she had taken the trouble not only to warn me, but to think out for me all the details of a plan of at least temporary escape, the inference that she hoped, hoped against hope, that I might be somehow saved, heartened me amazingly; so that I was rather inspirited at the prospect of adventure than daunted by the shadow of inescapable doom. I gathered myself together, determined to take as much advantage as possible of Vedia’s warning, and of the respite it afforded me. I resolved to follow her suggestions. I had set out for the Palace unusually early. I had plenty of time. I ordered my bearers to carry me through the heart of the City down the whole length of the _Vicus Tuscus_ to the meat market.
I should, I suppose, have been in an agony of vain regrets; I rather expected from moment to moment to be drowned in an inundation of such sensations, I was more than a little surprised at my actual feelings. Here I was, hitherto a wealthy Roman nobleman in excellent standing with my fellows, my superiors and the Prince; from now on a hunted fugitive and not likely to postpone my last hour more than a few days. I was, presumably, viewing the throbbing heart of glorious Rome for the last time. I should have felt chief mourner at my own funeral. Actually I relished, I hugely enjoyed, every pace of my progress through the filling streets, where the passers-by and idlers were still fresh, and lively after a night’s sleep and where everything was irradiated by cheerful morning sunlight. I felt cheerful as the sunlight.
Beyond the Meat Market I had my bearers stop at the Temple of Fortune, which I entered, there I prayed fervently before the statue of the Goddess.
When I was again out in the market I bought two live white hens, young and plump, and assigned one of my relief-bearers to carry carefully the basket in which the old market-woman ensconced them, after I had paid her well for her basket as well as her hens.
Then I had my men carry me down the straight empty street along the southwest flank of the Circus Maximus. Half way along it I halted them before the Temple of Mercury. This I entered and, bidding one of the attendants lead me to the priest in charge at that hour, I requested him to offer for me the two white hens and beseech for me the favor of the God.
Outside I reentered my litter and made my bearers trot all the way round by the big and little Coelian Hills to the Querquetulan Gate. We passed on this route many cheap shops. From one I bought a pair of horseman’s high boots, soft and supple and mud-proof. All the way I enjoyed hugely my outing and the sights and sounds around me. From another shop one of my reliefs brought me an umbrella hat which fitted me and a voluminous horseman’s raincloak which could not but protect anybody; at another I had bought for me a wallet; at another flint and steel in a good horn case, compact and neat.
Outside the Querquetulan Gate, which my bearers reached blown and sweating, although the reliefs had changed at short intervals, we had no difficulty in locating Plosurnia’s tavern. The holder of the bay horse with the blue and silver trappings recognized my pass-words and surrendered his charge to one of my extra bearers. At the tavern another lined my wallet with bread, sausages, olives, dried figs and cheese, while I was changing into horseman’s kit.
I put into the wallet my money, more than enough cash for my journey home, and Vedia’s letter. I then mounted, gave my boys their orders and set off at an easy canter. I knew I must show no signs of haste until I was on the Highroad, so I took my time about working round to it. Once on the _Via Tiburtina_, where horsemen at a tearing gallop, going in either direction, were too common a sight to cause any remarks, I let out my mettlesome mount and covered the remainder of the twenty-four miles to Tibur not long before noon.
Between the bridge over the Anio and Tibur are a number of hilltops, from each of which one has a fine view of Rome, if the weather is clear and bright. The weather was very bright and clear and the views very fine. At each hilltop I checked my mount, wheeled him and remained so for sometime, contemplating the magnificence I might never see again, the glory upon which my gaze, most likely, would never again feast. I should have felt my eyes fill with tears at each of these prospects, the viewing of which was, each time, in the nature of a last farewell. Yet, somehow, most irrationally, I felt anything but dejected, rather hopeful and full of conjectures about my future, instead of being filled with forebodings of doom, with sorrow for my hard fate.
BOOK II
DISAPPEARANCE
CHAPTER X
ESCAPE
At Tibur I put up at a clean little inn I had known of since boyhood, but which I had never before entered or even seen, so that I felt safe there and reasonably sure to pass as a traveller of no rank whatever. My knowledge of country ways, too, enabled me to behave like a landed proprietor of small means.
After a hearty lunch I pushed boldly on up the Valerian Highway and covered the twenty-two miles between Tibur and Carseoli without visibly tiring my mount. He was no more winded nor lathered than any traveller’s horse should be at the end of a day on the road. At Carseoli I again knew of a clean, quiet inn, and there I dined and slept.
Thence I intended to follow the rough country roads along the Tolenus. Stream-side roads are always bad, so I allowed two days more in which to reach home, and I could hardly have done it quicker. The night after I left Carseoli I camped by a tributary of the Tolenus in a very pretty little grove. From Carseoli on the weather was fine.
About the third hour of the day, on the fifth day before the Kalends of September, of a fair, bright morning, I came to my own estate. On the road nearing it I had met no one. I met no one along the woodland tracks leading into my property from that side: on my estate I met no one save just as I was about to enter my villa. Then I encountered Ofatulenus, bailiff of the Villa Farm. He, of course, was amazed to see me. I bade him mention to no one, not even to his wife, that I had returned home.
“Be secret!” I enjoined.
He nodded.
I believed he would be dumb. Give me a Sabine to keep a secret; I’d back any Sabine against any other sort of human being.
Ofatulenus took my horse and swore that no one outside of the stable should know it was there or suspect it. I told him to lock the trappings in the third locker in my harness-room, which locker I knew should be