g, my Sextus, that I have no powders for. I have
occasionally cured men. I can set most kinds of fractures with
considerable skill, old though I am. And I can divert a man's attention
sometimes, so that he lets nature heal him of mysterious diseases. But
success is something you have already wished for and have already made
or unmade. What you did, my Sextus, is the scaffolding of what you do
now; this, in turn, of what you will do next. I gave you my advice. I
bade you run away--in which case I would bid you farewell, but not
otherwise."

"I will not run."

"I heard you."

"And you said you are sentimental, Galen!"

"I have proved it to you. If I were not, I myself would run!"

Galen led the way out of the room into the hall where the mosaic floor
and plastered walls presented colored temple scenes--priests burning
incense at the shrine of Aesculapius, the sick and maimed arriving and
the cured departing, giving praise.

"There will be no hero left in Rome when they have slain our Roman
Hercules," said Galen. "He has been a triton in a pond of minnows. You
and I and all the other little men may not regret him afterward, since
heroes, and particularly mad ones, are not madly loved. But we will not
enjoy the rivalry of minnows."

He led Sextus to the porch and stood there for a minute holding to his
arm.

"There will be no rivals who will dare to raise their heads," said
Sextus, "once our Pertinax has made his bid for power."

"But he will not," Galen answered. "He will hesitate and let others do
the bidding. Too many scruples! He who would govern an empire might
better have fetters on feet and hands! Now go. But go not to the palace
if you hope to see a heroism--or tomorrow's dawn!"

XII.-LONG LIVE CAESAR!

That night it rained. The wind blew yelling squalls along the streets.
At intervals the din of hail on cobble-stones and roofs became a
stinging sea of sound. The wavering oil lanterns died out one by one
and left the streets in darkness in which now and then a slave-borne
litter labored like a boat caught spreading too much sail. The
overloaded sewers backed up and made pools of foulness, difficult to
ford. Along the Tiber banks there was panic where the river-boats were
plunging and breaking adrift on the rising flood and miserable, drenched
slaves labored with the bales of merchandize, hauling the threatened
stuff to higher ground.

But the noisiest, dismalest place wa