f us know it as yet! Dea
Flavia has smiled on many, but up to now hath made no choice."

"Then 'tis to an unknown man ye would all pledge your loyalty?"

"Unknown, yet vaguely guessed at, O praefect," here broke in Escanes,
with his usual breezy cheerfulness; "we all feel that Dea Flavia's
choice can but fall on an honourable man."

"Thou speakest truly," rejoined Taurus Antinor earnestly; "but I fear me
that for the present your schemes are too vague. The Augusta hath made
no choice of a husband as yet, and the Caesar is still your chosen lord."

"A brutish madman, who----"

"You chose him----"

"Since then he hath become a besotted despot."

"Still your Emperor--to whom you owe your dignities, your power, your
rank----"

"Thou dost defend him warmly, O praefect of Rome," suddenly interposed
Hortensius Martius who had followed every phase of the discussion with
heated brow and eyes alert and glowing. "Thou art ready to continue this
life of submission to a maniacal tyrant, to a semi-bestial
mountebank----"

"The life which I lead is of mine own making," rejoined Taurus Antinor
proudly; "the life ye lead is the one ye have chosen."

And with significant glance his dark eyes took in every detail of the
disordered room--the littered table, the luxurious couches, the
numberless empty dishes and broken goblets as well as the flushed faces
and the trembling hands, and involuntarily, perhaps, a look of harsh
contempt spread over his face.

Hortensius caught the look and winced under it; the words that had
accompanied it had struck him as with a lash, and further whipped up his
already violent rage.

"And," he retorted with an evil sneer, "to the Caesar thou wilt render
homage even in his most degraded orgies, and wilt lick the dust from off
his shoes when he hath kicked thee in the mouth."

Slowly Taurus Antinor turned to him, and Hortensius Martius appeared
just then so like a naughty child, that the look of harshness died out
of the praefect's eyes, and a smile almost of amusement, certainly of
indulgence, lit up for a moment the habitual sternness of his face.

"Loyalty to Caesar," he said simply, "doth not mean obsequiousness, as
all Roman patricians should know, oh Hortensius!"

"Aye! but meseems," rejoined the young man, whose voice had become
harsher and more loud as that of Taurus Antinor became more subdued and
low, "meseems that at the cost of thy manhood thou at least art prepared
to render unto