when death has come. The silence was that
of the tomb. The only audible voice was Domitian's. He was talking very
wittily and charmingly about murder, about proscriptions, the good
informers do, the utility of the headsman, the majesty of the law. The
guests, a trifle ill at ease, wished their host sweet dreams. "The same
to you," he answered, and deplored that they must go.

On the morrow informers and headsmen were at work. Any pretext was
sufficient. Birth, wealth, fame, or the lack of them--anything
whatever--and there the culprit stood, charged not with treason to an
emperor, but with impiety to a god. On the judgment seat Domitian sat.
Before him the accused passed, and under his eyes they were questioned,
tortured, condemned and killed. At once their property passed into the
keeping of the prince.

Of that he had need. The arena was expensive, but the drain was
elsewhere. A little before, a quarrelsome people, the Dacians, whom it
took a Trajan to subdue, had overrun the Danube, and were marching down
to Rome. Domitian set out to meet them. The Dacians retreated, not at
all because they were repulsed, but because Domitian thought it better
warfare to pay them to do so. On his return after that victory he
enjoyed a triumph as fair as that of Caesar. And each year since then
the emperor of Rome had paid tribute to a nation of mongrel oafs.

Of course he needed money. The informers were there and he got it, and
with it that spectacle of torture and of blood which he needed too.
Curiously, his melancholy increased; his good looks had gone; Psyche
was no longer amorous of his eyes. Something else haunted him,
something he could not define; the past, perhaps, perhaps the future.
To his ears came strange sounds, the murmur of his own name, and
suddenly silence. Then, too, there always seemed to be something behind
him; something that when he turned disappeared. The room in which he
slept he had covered with a polished metal that reflected everything,
yet still the intangible was there. Once Pallas came in her chariot,
waved him farewell, and disappeared, borne by black horses across the
black night.

The astrologers consulted had nothing pleasant to say. They knew, as
Domitian knew, that the end was near. So was theirs. To one of them,
who predicted his immediate death, he inquired, "What will your end
be?" "I," answered the astrologer--"I shall be torn by dogs." "To the
stake with him!" cried Domitian; "let him be