alarm him, would very likely throw matters into confusion.

8. But, although the advice which he gave was useful and necessary, he
spoke as to the winds, to no purpose. For by the counsels of Arbetio,
Apodemius, who was a persevering and bitter enemy to all good men, was
sent with letters to summon Silvanus to the presence. When he had
arrived in Gaul, taking no heed of the commission with which he was
charged, and caring but little for anything that might happen, he
remained inactive, without either seeing Silvanus, or delivering the
letters which commanded him to appear at court. And having taken the
receiver of the province into his counsels, he began with arrogance and
malevolence to harass the clients and servants of the master of the
horse, as if that officer had been already condemned and was on the
point of being executed.

9. In the mean time, while the arrival of Silvanus was looked for, and
while Apodemius was throwing everything, though quiet before, into
commotion, Dynamius, that he might by still more convincing proofs
establish belief in his wicked plots, had sent other forged letters
(agreeing with the previous ones which he had brought under the
emperor's notice by the agency of the prefect) to the tribune of the
factory at Cremona: these were written in the names of Silvanus and
Malarichus, in which the tribune, as one privy to their secrets, was
warned to lose no time in having everything in readiness.

10. But when this tribune had read the whole of the letters, he was for
some time in doubt and perplexity as to what they could mean (for he did
not recollect that those persons whose letters he had thus received had
ever spoken with him upon private transactions of any kind); and
accordingly he sent the letters themselves, by the courier who had
brought them, to Malarichus, sending a soldier also with him; and
entreated Malarichus to explain in intelligible language what he wanted,
and not to use such obscure terms. For he declared that he, being but a
plain and somewhat rude man, had not in the least understood what was
intimated so obscurely.

11. Malarichus the moment he received the letters, being already in
sorrow and anxiety, and alarmed for his own fate and that of his
countryman Silvanus, called around him the Franks, of whom at that time
there was a great multitude in the palace, and in resolute language laid
open and proved the falsehood of the machinations by which their lives
were thre