so; and yet, had he not chanced to let you care for your brother, you
would at this moment be wandering through the city like a mad dog, biting
all who crossed your path. Why do you not speak? Why not tell me once
more, Nemesianus, that a soldier must obey his commander blindly?--And
you, Apollinaris, will you dare still to assert that the hand with which
Caesar tore your face was guided only by righteous indignation at an
insult offered to an innocent maiden? Have you the courage to excuse the
murders by Caracalla of his own wife, and many other noble women, by his
anxiety for the safety of throne and state? I, too, am a woman, and may
hold up my head with the best; but what have I to do with the state or
with the throne? My eye met his, and from that moment the fiend was my
deadly enemy. A quick death at the hands of one of his soldiers seemed
too good for the woman he hated. Wild beasts were to tear me to pieces
before his eyes. Is that not sufficient for you? Put every abomination
together, everything unworthy of an honorable man and abhorrent to the
gods, and you have the man whom you so willingly obey. I am only the
wife of a citizen. But were I the widow of a noble Aurelian and your
mother--" Here Apollinaris, whose wounds were beginning to burn again,
broke in: "She would have counseled us to leave revenge to the gods. He
is Caesar!"

"He is a villain!" shrieked the matron--"the curse, the shame of
humanity, a damnable destroyer of peace and honor and life, such as the
world has never beheld before! To kill him would be to earn the
gratitude and blessing of the universe. And you, the scions of a noble
house, you, I say, prove that there still are men among so many slaves!
It is Rome herself who calls you through me--like her, a woman maltreated
and wounded to the heart's core--to bear arms in her service till she
gives you the signal for making an end of the dastardly blood hound!"