“If the truth were known, he is afraid of Flavia Titiana.  As a wife she is bad enough, but as an empress—­”

Galen nodded.

“If you love your Pertinax,” he answered, “keep him off the throne!  He has too many scruples.”

She frowned, having few, which were firm and entirely devoted to Pertinax’ fortune.

“Love him?  I would give him up to see him deified!” she whispered; and again Galen nodded, deeply understanding.

“That is because you have never had children,” he assured her, smiling.  “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, Galen?”

“Too much of a man to be an emperor,” said Galen, smiling amid wrinkles.  “By observing a man’s virtues one may infer what his faults are.  You would try to rule the empire honestly, which is impossible.  A more dishonest man would let it rule itself and claim the credit, whereas you would give the praise to others, who would shoulder off the work and all the blame on to you.  An empire is like a human body, which heals itself if the head will let it.  Too many heads—­a conference of doctors—­and the patient dies!  One doctor, doing nothing with an air of confidence, and the patient gets well!  There, I have told you more than all the senate knows!”

Came Scylax, out of breath, less menial than most men’s slaves, his head and shoulders upright and the hand that held a letter thrust well forward as if what he had to do were more important than the way he did it.

“This came,” he said, standing beside Sextus’ couch.  “Cadmus brought it, running all the way from Antioch.”

His hand was trembling; evidently Cadmus had by some means learned the contents of the letter and had told.