water that they should lay the dust along the road
on which he would travel. At Trevirorum on the banks of the Rhine, he
caused two hundred of his picked guard to dress up as barbarians and to
make feint to attack the camp at midnight. This they did with necessary
shoutings and clashings of steel against steel. Then did the greatest
and best of Caesars sally forth in full battle array followed by a few of
his most trusted men, and in the darkness there was heard more shouting
and more clashings of steel until Caligula returned in triumph at
sunrise to his camp. He had passed hempen ropes round the necks of the
mock barbarians, and ever after had them dragged in the wake of his
litter, even as if they were prisoners of war. No doubt he had paid them
well for acting such a farce."

"But was the army blind to all this folly?"

"The Caesar only kept some five hundred picked men round him in his camp.
These he bribed into acquiescence of all his mad pranks. The rest of the
legions were some distance away all the time. They believed all that
they were told; mayhap they thought it wisest to believe."

"I know that in Belgica, on the shores of the ocean----" began Augustus
Philario after a while.

But he was not allowed to proceed. Shouts of derision broke in upon the
tale, followed by expressions of rage.

"What is the good of retailing further follies," said Caius Nepos at
last; "we all know that a madman, a vain, besotted fool wields now the
sceptre of Julius Caesar and of great Augustus. The numbers of his
misdeeds are like the grains of sand on the seashore, his orgies have
shamed our generation, his debauches are a disgrace upon the fame of
Rome. Patricians awake! The day hath come, the hour is close at hand.
To-morrow, mayhap, at the public games ... a tumult amongst the people
... it should be easy to rouse that ... then a well-edged dagger ... and
the Empire is rid of the most hideous and loathsome tyrant that ever
brutalised a nation and shamed an empire."

Even as he spoke, and despite the deaf-mute slaves and the foreign
girls, he lowered his voice until it sank to the merest whisper.
Reclining upon the couches with elbows buried in silken cushions the
others all stretched forward now, until two score of heads met in one
continued circle, forehead to forehead and ear to ear, whilst in the
midst of them an oil lamp flickered low and lit up at fitful intervals
the sober, callous faces with the hard mouths and c