e had fought to-day, this was perhaps the most
intolerable because the worldly man in him cried out against the
futility of his own sacrifice.

To give up every hope of happiness, every aspiration for the welfare of
an entire nation for the sake of this miserable coward, whose thoughts
of self-preservation only alternated with those of maniacal tyranny,
seemed indeed insensate mockery. Duty could not possibly lie in this.
This base creature's worthless life surely could not be weighed in the
balance against the countless others which--despite any promises that
might be wrung from him now--he would inevitably sacrifice to his own
lust for blood and for revenge.

The worldly man, the thinking philosopher, the pagan in fact, faced
these propositions and placed them before the Christian. But the time
had gone by for mental conflict. The Christian had fought until his
numbed soul had almost lost the power of suffering; all he knew now was
that he must not reason, he must neither think nor philosophise. The
Master whom he had seen with limbs stretched upon a Cross in unspeakable
agony and humiliation, might also have overturned a Caesar and ruled the
world from the heights of a throne. He chose to rule it from a place of
infamy, and when His dying lips proclaimed to that same world the
supreme finality of its salvation: "It is accomplished!" it was not to
the sound of triumphal music, with banners flying and the spoils of
conquest around, it was to the accompaniment of taunts and of derision
and with body stripped naked before a jeering world.

"I have offered thee my service, O Caesar," said Taurus Antinor with a
mighty effort at deference and calm. "An thou wilt follow mine advice I
can shield thee from the wrath of the people until such time as that
which has occurred to-day, lies buried in the bosom of the past."

"What must I do?... What must I do?" muttered Caligula between his
chattering teeth. He was clinging to the praefect with both hands, for
his knees were shaking under him and he would have fallen had he
attempted to stand up alone. "Save me, praefect.... Save me.... Do not
let them kill me.... I cannot die.... I will not ... and those cowards
would murder me...."

"Wilt trust thyself to me, O Caesar?"

"Yes, yes, what must I do?"

"Come forth with me into the streets. Wrapped in dark cloaks the people
will not recognise us. They would never expect the Caesar to leave his
palace while his life is in dange