‘Well done, Nobilior!’ cried the praetor, giving the first vent to the popular excitement.

‘Bravely struck, my Berbix!’ answered Clodius from his seat.

And the wild murmur, swelled by many a shout, echoed from side to side.

The vizors of both the horsemen were completely closed (like those of the knights in after times), but the head was, nevertheless, the great point of assault; and Nobilior, now wheeling his charger with no less adroitness than his opponent, directed his spear full on the helmet of his foe.  Berbix raised his buckler to shield himself, and his quick-eyed antagonist, suddenly lowering his weapon, pierced him through the breast.  Berbix reeled and fell.

‘Nobilior!  Nobilior!’ shouted the populace.

‘I have lost ten sestertia,’ said Clodius, between his teeth.

‘Habet!—­he has it,’ said Pansa, deliberately.

The populace, not yet hardened into cruelty, made the signal of mercy; but as the attendants of the arena approached, they found the kindness came too late—­the heart of the Gaul had been pierced, and his eyes were set in death.  It was his life’s blood that flowed so darkly over the sand and sawdust of the arena.

’It is a pity it was so soon over—­there was little enough for one’s trouble,’ said the widow Fulvia.

’Yes—­I have no compassion for Berbix.  Any one might have seen that Nobilior did but feint.  Mark, they fix the fatal hook to the body—­they drag him away to the spoliarium—­they scatter new sand over the stage!  Pansa regrets nothing more than that he is not rich enough to strew the arena with borax and cinnabar, as Nero used to do.’

’Well, if it has been a brief battle, it is quickly succeeded.  See my handsome Lydon on the arena—­ay—­and the net-bearer too, and the swordsmen! oh, charming!’

There were now on the arena six combatants:  Niger and his net, matched against Sporus with his shield and his short broadsword; Lydon and Tetraides, naked save by a cincture round the waist, each armed only with a heavy Greek cestus—­and two gladiators from Rome, clad in complete steel, and evenly matched with immense bucklers and pointed swords.

The initiatory contest between Lydon and Tetraides being less deadly than that between the other combatants, no sooner had they advanced to the middle of the arena than, as by common consent, the rest held back, to see how that contest should be decided, and wait till fiercer weapons might replace the cestus, ere they themselves commenced hostilities.  They stood leaning on their arms and apart from each other, gazing on the show, which, if not bloody enough, thoroughly to please the populace, they were still inclined to admire, because its origin was of their ancestral Greece.