"You mother Pertinax, who is more than twice your age--just as Marcia
has mothered that monster Commodus until her heart is breaking."

"But I thought you were Pertinax' friend?"

"So I am."

"And his urgent adviser to--"

"Yes, so I was. I have changed my opinion; only the maniacs never do
that. Pertinax would make a splendid minister for Lucius Severus; and
the two of them could bring back the Augustan days. Persuade him to it.
He must forget he hates him."

"Let him come!" said the voice of Pertinax. He was still leaning out,
with one hand on a marble pillar, much more interested in the moonlit
view of revelry than in the altercation between slaves. He strolled
back and stood smiling at Cornificia, his handsome face expressing
satisfaction but a rather humorous amusement at his inability to
understand her altogether.

"Are you like all other women?" he asked. "I just saw a naked woman
stab a man with her hairpin and kick his corpse into the shrubbery
before the breath was out of it!"

"Galen has deserted you," said Cornificia. The murder was
uninteresting; nobody made any comment.

"Not he!" Pertinax answered, and went and sat on Galen's couch. "You
find me not man enough for the senate to make a god of me--is that it,