mirth-provoking blue eyes, the loose, beautifully balanced seat on
horseback and the cavalry-like carriage of his shoulders, served their
notice to the world at large that he would stick to friends of his own
choosing and for purely personal reasons, in spite of, and in the teeth
of anything.

"As I said," remarked Sextus, "if Pertinax comes--"

"He will show us how foolish a soldier can be in the arms of a woman,"
Norbanus remarked, laughing again, glad the long silence was broken.

"Orcus (the messenger of Dis, who carried dead souls to the underworld.
The masked slaves who dragged dead gladiators out of the arena were
disguised to represent Orcus) take his women! What I was going to say
was, we shall learn from him the real news from Rome."

"All the names of the popular dancers!"

"And if Galen is there we shall learn--"

"About Commodus' health. That is more to the point. Now if we could
get into Galen's chest of medicines and substitute--"

"Galen is an honest doctor," Sextus interrupted. "If Galen is there we
will find out what the philosophers are discussing in Rome when spies
aren't listening. Pertinax dresses himself like a strutting peacock and
pretends that women and money are his only interests, but what the wise
ones said yesterday, Pertinax does today; and what they say today, he
will do tomorrow. He can look more like a popinjay and act more like a
man than any one in Rome."