e to her,
and hour after hour she lay there, her eyes fixed into the darkness on
which, at times, her fevered fancy traced a glowing cross.

CHAPTER VIII

"The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is
of the Lord."--PROVERBS XVI. 33.

And even thus did the mighty Empire hurry headlong to its fall; with
shouts of joy and cries of exultation, with triumphal processions, with
music, with games and with flowers.

The Caesar had returned from Germany and Gaul having played his part of
mountebank upon the arena of the world. Eaten up with senseless and
cynical vanity, Caius Julius Caesar Caligula desired to be the Caesar of
his army as he was princeps and imperator, high pontiff and supreme
dictator of the Empire. But as there was no war to conduct, no rebellion
to subdue, he had invented a war and harassed some barbarians who had no
thought save that of peace.

He stage-managed conspiracies and midnight attacks, drilling his own
soldiers into acting the parts of malcontents, of escaped prisoners, of
bloodthirsty barbarians, the while he himself--as chief actor in the
play--vanquished the mock foes and took from them mock spoils of war.

Then he upbraided Rome for her inertia whilst he, the Emperor,
confronted dangers and endured hardships for her sake. His letters, full
of glowing accounts of his supposed prowess, of the ferocity of the
enemy, of the fruits of victory snatched at the cost of innumerable
sacrifices were solemnly read to the assembled senators in the temple of
Mars, and to a vast concourse of people gathered in the Forum.

They listened to these letters with awe and reverence proud of the
valour of their Caesar, rejoicing in the continued glory of the mightiest
Empire of the world--their own Empire which they, the masters of the
earth and of the sea, had made under the guidance of rulers such as he
who even now was returning laurel-laden and victory-crowned from
Germany.

And the triumphal procession was begun. First came the galley in which
Caligula was said to have crossed the ocean for the purpose of subduing
some rebel British princes, but in which he in verity had spent some
pleasant days fishing in the bay. It was brought back to Rome in solemn
state by land, right across the country of the Allemanni and carried the
whole of the way by sixteen stalwart barbarians--supposed prisoners of
war.

The galley was received with imperial honours as if it had been a human
cr