ror of its armies, to
favor no man, to do and speak impartial justice to all men alike.

"You know what happens to the shirker who sleeps on his post when on
sentry-duty about a camp at night in the face of the enemy. If guilty of
what you charge any Prefect of the Praetorium deserves not otherwise than
such a traitor. I have heard all this man has to say. I did not believe
you this morning. I do not disbelieve you now. I do not believe this man,
I believe he has been treacherous and that in his dexterous defence just
now he lied. Watch me! I turn him over to you."

And, with a really magnificent gesture, he stepped half a pace away from
Perennis, stretched out his left arm, the golden baton in his hand, and,
with that fatal truncheon, touched him on the shoulder.

The roar that rose was the roar of wild beasts ravening for their prey.
The men, packed as they were, somehow surged forward. On the shoulders of
their fellow-centurions, a sort of billow of the foremost sergeants rose
like surf against a rock; like surf breaking against a rock a sort of foam
of them overflowed the front of the platform. For the twinkling of an eye
I beheld above this rising tide of executioners the imperious dignity of
the Emperor, master of the scene, self-confident and certain that all men
would approve of his decision, magnificent in his military trappings; the
incredulous amazement of Perennis, his pale, watery blue eyes bleared in
his lead-colored, bloodless face, as he stood dazed and numb; the horror
of his bedizened wife and sister, both fleshy women, dark-skinned and
normally red-cheeked, now gray with despair, like the two wretched lads
beside them; the cruelly feminine relish, as upon the successful fruition
of long and tortuous intrigues, blazoned on the faces of Marcia and of
Cleander's wife, a very showy woman with golden hair, violet eyes and a
delicately pink and white complexion: a similar expression of relished
triumph on the broad, fat, ruddy face of her big husband, who looked just
what he had been; a man who had started life as a slave; whose master had
thought him likely to be most profitably employed as a street porter, in
which capacity he had for years carried packs, crates, bales, chests,
rafters and such like immensely heavy loads long distances and had thriven
on his exertions; who, whatever brains he had since displayed, however
much character and merit had contributed to his dazzling rise in life, had
retained