staggering to the fountain, where he sat down.

"Bona dea! But the man took time to tell his secret!" Marcia exclaimed.
"Popeia, you had better take my litter to the palace and bring that minx
Cornelia. I suspected it was she but wasn't sure of it. Don't give her
an inkling of what you know. Go with her to her apartment and watch her
dress; then make an excuse to keep her waiting in your room while you
go back and search hers. Have help if you need it; take two of my
eunuchs, but watch that they don't read the journal. Look under her
mattress. Look everywhere. If you can't find the journal, bring
Cornelia without it. I will soon make her tell us where it is."

VIII. NARCISSUS

"A gladiator's life is not so bad if he behaves himself, and while it
lasts," Narcissus said.

He was sitting beside Sextus, son of Maximus, in the ergastulum beneath
the training school of Bruttius Marius, which was well known to be the
emperor's establishment, although maintained in the name of a citizen.
There was a stone seat at the end where sunlight poured through a barred
window high up in the wall. To right and left facing a central corridor
were cells with doors of latticed iron. Each cell had its own barred
window, hardly a foot square, set high out of reach and the light,
piercing the latticed doors, made criss-cross patterns on the white wall
of the corridor. Narcissus got up, glanced into each cell and sat down
again beside Sextus.

"The trouble is, they don't," he went on. "If you let them out, they
drink and get into poor condition; and if you keep them in, they kill
themselves unless they're watched. These men are reserved for Paulus,
and they know they haven't a chance against him."

"Paulus' luck won't last forever," Sextus remarked grimly.

"No, nor his skill, I suppose. But he doesn't debauch himself, so he's
always in perfect condition."

"Haven't you a man in here who might be made nervy enough to kill him?"
Sextus asked. "They would kill the man himself, of course, directly
afterward, but we might undertake to enrich his relatives."

Narcissus shook his head.

"One might have a chance with the sword or with the net and trident,
though I doubt it. But Paulus uses a javelin and his aim is like
lightning. Only yesterday at practise they loosed eleven lions at him
from eleven directions at the same moment. He slew them with eleven
javelins, and each one stone dead. Some of these men sa