who might have been expected to defend him, either
fled from the scene, or stood by in consternation and amazement,
leaving the conspirators to wreak their vengeance on their wretched
victim, to the full.

In fact though while a despot lives and retains his power, thousands
are ready to defend him and to execute his will, however much in
heart they may hate and detest him, yet when he is dead, or when it
is once certain that he is about to die, an instantaneous change
takes place and every one turns against him. The multitudes in and
around the theater and the palace who had an hour before trembled
before this mighty potentate, and seemed to live only to do his
bidding, were filled with joy to see him brought to the dust. The
conspirators, when the success of their plans and the death of their
oppressor was once certain, abandoned themselves to the most
extravagant joy. They cut and stabbed the fallen body again and
again, as if they could never enough wreak their vengeance upon it.
They cut off pieces of the body and bit them with their teeth in
their savage exultation and triumph. At length they left the body
where it lay, and went forth into the city where all was now of
course tumult and confusion.

The body remained where it had fallen until late at night. Then some
attendants of the palace came and conveyed it away. They were sent,
it was said, by Caesonia, the wife of the murdered man. Caesonia had
an infant daughter at this time, and she remained herself with the
child, in a retired apartment of the palace while these things were
transpiring. Distracted with grief and terror at the tidings that
she heard, she clung to her babe, and made the arrangements for the
interment of the body of her husband without leaving its cradle. She
imagined perhaps that there was no reason for supposing that she or
the child were in any immediate danger, and accordingly she took no
measures toward effecting an escape. If so, she did not understand
the terrible frenzy to which the conspirators had been aroused, and
for which the long series of cruelties and indignities which they
had endured from her husband had prepared them. For at midnight one
of them broke into her apartment, stabbed the mother in her chair,
and taking the innocent infant from its cradle, killed it by beating
its head against the wall.

[Illustration: CAESONIA.]

Atrocious as this deed may seem, it was not altogether wanton and
malignant cruelty which prom