been received, than Zminis began to give his report of the great massacre
in the Museum. He could boast of having spared scarcely one of the empty
word-pickers with whom the epigrams against Caesar and his mother had
originated. Teachers and pupils, even the domestic officials, had been
overtaken by the insulted sovereign's vengeance. Nothing was left but
the stones of that great institution, which had indeed long outlived its
fame. The Numidians who had helped in the work had been drunk with
blood, and had forced their way even into the physician's lecture-rooms
and the hospital adjoining. There, too, they had given no quarter; and
among the sufferers who had been carried thither to be healed they had
found Tarautas, the wounded gladiator. A Numidian, the youngest of the
legion, a beardless youth, had pinned the terrible conqueror of lions and
men to the bed with his spear, and then, with the same weapon, had
released at least a dozen of his fellow-sufferers from their pain.

As he told his story the Egyptian stood staring into vacancy, as though
he saw it all, and the whites of his eyeballs gleamed more hideously than
ever out of his swarthy face. The lean, sallow wretch stood before
Caesar like a talking corpse, and did not observe the effect his
narrative of the gladiator's death was producing. But he soon found
out. While he was yet speaking, Caracalla, leaning on the table by his
couch with both hands, fixed his eyes on his face, without a word.

Then he suddenly sprang up, and, beside himself with rage, he interrupted
the terrified Egyptian and railed at him furiously:

"My Tarautas, who had so narrowly escaped death! The bravest hero of his
kind basely murdered on his sick-bed, by a barbarian, a beardless
boy! And you, you loathsome jackal, could allow it? This deed--and you
know it, villain--will be set down to my score. It will be brought up