ere long controlled this display of feeling, ashamed to shed tears for
her who had cheated him and who had fled from his love. Only once more
did he sob aloud. Then he raised himself, and while holding his
handkerchief to his eyes he addressed the company with theatrical pathos:

"Yes, my friends, tell whom you will that you have seen Bassianus weep;
but add that his tears flowed from grief at the necessity for punishing
so many of his subjects with such rigor. Say, too, that Caesar wept with
pity and indignation. For what good man would not be moved to sorrow at
seeing the sick and wounded thus maltreated? What humane heart could
refrain from loud lamentations at the sight of barbarity which is not
withheld from laying a murderous hand even on the sacred anguish of the
sick and wounded? Defend me, then, against those Romans who may shrug
their shoulders over the weakness of a weeping Caesar--the Terrible. My
office demands severity; and yet, my friends, I am not ashamed of these
tears."

With this he took leave of his guests and retired to rest, and those who
remained were soon agreed that every word of this speech, as well as
Caesar's tears, were rank hypocrisy. The mime Theocritus admired his
sovereign in all sincerity, for how rarely could even the greatest actors
succeed in forcing from their eyes, by sheer determination, a flood of
real, warm tears--he had seen them flow. As Caesar quitted the room,
his hand on the lion's mane, the praetor Priscillianus whispered to Cilo:

"Your disciple has been taking lessons here of the weeping crocodile."

.........................

Out on the great square the soldiers were resting after the day's bloody