t. Doubtless that would be the best thing which could happen,
especially for the man who would then be spared reading these pages!
But it will also be well for me that these lines should lie--or be
lost--in some other place than here. For here in Constantinople they
may fall into certain dainty little well-kept hands, which possibly
might gracefully wave an order to cut off my head--or some other useful
portion of my anatomy to which I have been accustomed since my birth.
But if I send these truths hence to the West, they will not be so
easily seized by those dangerous little fingers which discover every
secret in the capital, whenever they search in earnest. Whether you are
living in your house at the foot of the Capitol, or with the Regent at
Ravenna, I do not know; but I shall despatch this to Rome, for toward
Rome my thoughts fly, seeking Cethegus.

You may ask derisively why I write what is so dangerous. Because I
must! I praise--constrained by fear--so many people and things with my
lips that I condemn in my heart, that I must at least confess the truth
secretly in writing. Well, I might write out my rage, read it, and then
throw the pages into the sea, you say. But--and this is the other
reason for this missive--I am vain, too. The cleverest man I know must
read, must praise what I write, must be aware that I was not so foolish
as to believe all I extolled to be praiseworthy. Later perhaps I can
use the notes,--if they are not lost,--when at some future day I write
the true history of the strange things I have experienced and shortly
shall undergo.

So keep these pages if they do reach you. They are not exactly letters;
it is a sort of diary that I am sending to you. I shall expect no
answer. Cethegus does not need me, at present. Why should Cethegus
write to me, now? Yet perhaps I shall soon learn your opinion from your
own lips. Do you marvel?

True, we have not met since we studied together at Athens. But possibly
I may soon seek you in your Italy. For I believe that the war declared
to-day against the Vandals is but the prelude to the conflict with your
tyrants, the Ostrogoths. Now I have written the great secret which at
present is known to so few.

It is a strange thing to see before one, in clear, sharp letters, a
terrible fate, pregnant with blood and tears, which no one else
suspects; at such times the statesman feels akin to the god who is
forging the thunderbolt that will so soon strike happy human