ttempt it yet. Your uncle is as well as he was at home
in Burdigala. Let him first sicken under this Barbarian sky, the
unwonted fatigues of camp life in the rain and swamps; then it will be
easier. But now--in perfect health? No, no! Have patience. Wait a
little longer."

"I cannot. My creditors, the usurers, are hounding me to the death;
have followed me here to the camp. And this region, this neighborhood,
as you know, is more perilous to me than any other spot in the whole
world. So hasten!"

"As soon as he begins to ail a little I'll do it at once. But I must
confess--"

"What?"

"The vial of poison you gave me, I--"

"Lost? You blockhead!"

"No, it is broken. During the steep ascent of the mountain recently I
slipped, struck my breast against a boulder, and crushed the little
bottle, whose contents all poured out."

"Alas, then where else--"

"Have no fear, my lord. I've seen hemlock enough growing in these
marshy meadows to poison our whole army. I have already begun to gather
and dry it. Do you the same, and as soon--"

Loud voices and the clank of weapons were heard; the face vanished, and
the slave passed through the doorway of the tent into the open air.

CHAPTER IX.

Directly after, Ausonius and Saturninus entered the Praefectorian tent
from the _Via Principalis_, while Herculanus, coming from the rear,
passed in with them. The host shared his seat on the couch with his two
guests.

He was a man of fifty-two, but his stately figure showed few signs of
approaching age, and his noble face lacked none of the characteristics
of the patrician Roman in the modelling of the forehead, nose, and
finely arched brows.

But the mouth had smiled so often--probably far too often in self
complacency--that it had forgotten how to close with firm decision; it
was much too weak for a man. And the light-brown eyes, so pleasant and
kindly, so content with everything and everybody--and not least with
Ausonius--betrayed more plainly than any other feature the approach of
age; their glance had lost the fire of youth. They seemed weary, not of
life but of reading; for Ausonius had been professor, rhetorician,
tutor of princes, and poet. In those days that meant a man who read an
immense amount and, in default of elevating thoughts of his own,
extracted with the industry of a bee the ideas of the writers of four
centuries, tore them asunder, and put them together again in such tiny