upon the matting, ostensibly in order to speak with one of the
scribes on the tier below, but who was in reality casting furtive
glances in the direction where Hortensius Martius stood talking with the
praefectus.

"These slaves," said Taurus Antinor curtly, "all belong to the imperial
treasury; their peculium is entirely made up of money gained through
giving information--both false and true. Have a care, O Hortensius
Martius!"

But the other shrugged his shoulders with well-studied indifference. It
was not the mode at this epoch to seem anything but bored at all the
circumstances of public and private life in Rome, at the simple
occurrences of daily routine or at the dangers which threatened every
man through the crazy whims of a demented despot.

It had even become the fashion to accept outwardly and without the
slightest show of interest the wild extravagances and insane
debaucheries of the ferocious tyrant who for the nonce wielded the
sceptre of the Caesars. The young patricians of the day looked on with
apparent detachment at his excesses and the savage displays of unbridled
power of which he was so inordinately fond, and they affected a lofty
disregard for the horrible acts of injustice and of cruelty which this
half-crazy Emperor had rendered familiar to the citizens of Rome.

Nothing in the daily routine of life amused these votaries of
fashion--nothing roused them from their attitude of somnolent placidity,
except perhaps some peculiarly bloody combat in the arena--one of those
unfettered orgies of lust of blood which they loved to witness and which
have for ever disgraced the glorious pages of Roman history.

Then horror would rouse them for a brief moment from their apathy, for
they were not cruel, only satiated with every sight, every excitement
and luxury which their voluptuous city and the insane caprice of the
imperator perpetually offered them; and they thirsted for horrors as a
sane man thirsts for beauty, that it might cause a diversion in the even
tenor of their lives, and mayhap raise a thrill in their dormant brains.

Therefore even now, when apparently he was toying with his life,
Hortensius Martius did not depart outwardly from the attitude of
supercilious indifference which fashion demanded. They were all actors,
these men, always before an audience, and even among themselves they
never really left off acting the part which they had made so completely
their own.

But that the indifferen