Commodus rose to his feet.  All movement ceased then and there was utter silence.  For a moment he stood scowling at the crowd, one hand resting on the golden lion’s head that flanked the throne.  Then he laughed.

“Too many petitions!” he sneered, pointing at the overflowing basket; and in another moment he had vanished through the door behind the marble screen.  Met and escorted up the stairs by groups of cringing slaves, he reached a columned corridor.  Rich carpets lay on the mosaic floor; sunlight, from under; the awnings of a balcony glorious with potted flowers, shone on the colored statuary and the Grecian paintings.

“What are all these women doing?” he demanded.  There were girls, half-hidden behind the statues, each one trying, as he passed her, to divine his mood and to pose attractively.

“Where is Marcia?  What will she do to me next?  Is this some new scheme of hers to keep me from enjoying my manhood?  Send them away!  The next girl I catch in the corridor shall be well whipped.  Where is Marcia?”

Throwing away his toga for a slave to catch and fold he turned between gilded columns, through a bronze door, into the antechamber of the royal suite.  There a dozen gladiators greeted him as if he were the sun shining out of the clouds after a month of rainy weather.

“This is better!” he exclaimed.  “Ho, there, Narcissus!  Ho, there, Horatius!  Ha!  So you recover, Albinus?  What a skull the man has!  Not many could take what I gave him and be on their feet again within the week!  You may follow me, Narcissus.  But where is Marcia?”

Marcia called to him through the curtained door that led to the next room—­

“I am waiting, Commodus.”

“By Jupiter, when she calls me Commodus it means an argument!  Are some more of her Christians in the carceres, I wonder?  Or has some new highwayman—­By Juno’s breasts, I tremble when she calls me Commodus!”

The gladiators laughed.  He made a pass at one of them, tripped him, scuffled a moment and raised him struggling in the air, then flung him into the nearest group, who broke his fall and set him on his feet again.

“Am I strong enough to face my Marcia?” he asked and, laughing, passed into the other room, where half a dozen women grouped themselves around the imperial mistress.

“What now?” he demanded.  “Why am I called Commodus?”

He stood magnificent, with folded arms, confronting her, play-acting the part of a guiltless man arraigned before the magistrate.

“O Roman Hercules,” she said, “I spoke in haste, you came so much sooner than expected.  What woman can remember you are anything but Caesar when you smile at her?  I am in love, and being loved, I am—­”

“Contriving some new net for me, I’ll wager!  Come and watch the new men training with the caestus; I will listen to your plan for ruling me and Rome while the sight of a good set-to stirs my genius to resist your blandishments!”