eat effort, sat erect.

"Never mind; it is over! But the strain of this hour--was probably--too
much. I will go--no, I need no support--to the basilica, to pray. Send
Zazo there as soon as he returns--before you go to the King; do you
hear? God grant my ardent desire!"

CHAPTER VII

TO CETHEGUS, A FRIEND.

The Vandal war has been given up, and for what pitiable reasons! You
know that I have thought it far wiser for our rulers to attend to the
matters immediately around us than to meddle with the Barbarians. For
so long as this unbearable burden of taxation and abuse of official
power continues in the Roman Empire, so long every conquest, every
increase in the number of our subjects, will merely swell the list of
unfortunates. Yet if Africa could be restored to the Empire, we ought
not to relinquish the proud thought from sheer cowardice!

There stands the ugly word,--unhappily a true one. From cowardice? Not
Theodora's. Indeed, that is not one of the faults of this delicate,
otherwise womanly woman. Two years ago, when the terrible insurrection
of the Greens and Blues in the Circus swept victoriously over the whole
city, when Justinian despaired and wished to fly, Theodora's courage
kept him in the palace, and Belisarius's fidelity saved him. But this
time the blame does not rest upon the Emperor; it is the cowardice of
the Roman army, or especially, the fleet. True, Justinian's zeal
has cooled considerably since the failure of the crafty plan to
destroy Genseric's kingdom; almost without a battle, principally by
"arts,"--treachery, ordinary people term them. Hilderic, at an
appointed time, was to send his whole army into the interior for a
great campaign against the Moors; our fleet was to run into the
unprotected harbors of Carthage, land the army, occupy the city, and
make Hilderic, Hoamer, and a Senator the Emperor's three governors of
the recovered province of Africa.

But this time we crafty ones were outwitted by a brain still more
subtle. Our friend from Tripolis writes that he was deceived in the
Arian priest whom he believed he had won for our cause. This man,
at first well disposed, afterwards became wavering, warned,
dissuaded--nay, perhaps even betrayed the plan to the Vandals. So an
open attack must be made. This pleased Belisarius, but not the Emperor.
He hesitated.

Meanwhile--Heaven knows through whom--the rumor of the coming Vandal
war spread through the court