l officers commanding large detachments of troops; and at
length grew of consequence sufficient to draw upon himself the emperor's
eye, and the honor of his personal displeasure. In high wrath and
disdain at the insults offered to his eagles by this fugitive slave,
Commodus fulminated against him such an edict as left him no hope of
much longer escaping with impunity.

Public vengeance was now awakened; the imperial troops were marching
from every quarter upon the same centre; and the slave became sensible
that in a very short space of time he must be surrounded and destroyed.
In this desperate situation he took a desperate resolution: he assembled
his troops, laid before them his plan, concerted the various steps for
carrying it into effect, and then dismissed them as independent
wanderers. So ends the first chapter of the tale.

The next opens in the passes of the Alps, whither, by various routes, of
seven or eight hundred miles in extent, these men had threaded their way
in manifold disguises, through the very midst of the emperor's camps.
According to this man's gigantic enterprise, in which the means were as
audacious as the purpose, the conspirators were to rendezvous, and first
to recognize each other, at the gates of Rome. From the Danube to the
Tiber did this band of robbers severally pursue their perilous routes
through all the difficulties of the road and the jealousies of the
military stations, sustained by the mere thirst of vengeance--vengeance
against that mighty foe whom they knew only by his proclamations against
themselves. Everything continued to prosper; the conspirators met under
the walls of Rome; the final details were arranged; and those also would
have prospered but for a trifling accident. The season was one of
general carnival at Rome; and, by the help of those disguises which the
license of this festival time allowed, the murderers were to have
penetrated as maskers to the emperor's retirement, when a casual word or
two awoke the suspicions of a sentinel. One of the conspirators was
arrested; under the terror and uncertainty of the moment, he made much
ampler discoveries than were expected of him; the other accomplices were
secured: and Commodus was delivered from the uplifted daggers of those
who had sought him by months of patient wanderings, pursued through all
the depths of the Illyrian forests, and the difficulties of the Alpine
passes. It is not easy to find words of admiration commensu