“I would have waited until morning, if necessary, before seeing him.  Here!” and while Caesar spoke he half led, half thrust, the messenger into his own chair, and, anticipating the nimblest slave, unclasped the travel-soiled paenula from Drusus’s shoulders.  The young man tried to rise and shake off these ministrations, but the proconsul gently restrained him.  A single look sufficed to send all the curious retinue from the room.  Only Antiochus remained, sitting on a stool in a distant corner.

“And now, my friend,” said Caesar, smiling, and drawing a chair close up to that of Drusus, “tell me when it was that you left Rome.”

“Two days ago,” gasped the wearied messenger.

“Mehercle!” cried the general, “a hundred and sixty miles in two days!  This is incredible!  And you come alone?”

“I had Andraemon, the fastest horse in Rome.  Antonius, Caelius, Cassius, Curio, and myself kept together as far as Clusium.  There was no longer any danger of pursuit, no need for more than one to hasten.”  Drusus’s sentences were coming in hot pants.  “I rode ahead.  Rode my horse dead.  Took another at Arretium.  And so I kept changing.  And now—­I am here.”  And with this last utterance he stopped, gasping.

Caesar, instead of demanding the tidings from Rome, turned to Antiochus, and bade him bring a basin and perfumed water to wash Drusus’s feet.  Meantime the young man had recovered his breath.

“You have heard of the violence of the new consuls and how Antonius and Cassius withstood them.  On the seventh the end came.  The vetoes were set aside.  Our protests were disregarded.  The Senate has clothed the consuls and other magistrates with dictatorial power; they are about to make Lucius Domitius proconsul of Gaul.”

“And I?” asked Caesar, for the first time displaying any personal interest.

“You, Imperator, must disband your army and return to Rome speedily, or be declared an outlaw, as Sertorius or Catilina was.”

“Ah!” and for a minute the proconsul sat motionless, while Drusus again kept silence.

“But you—­my friends—­the tribunes?” demanded the general, “you spoke of danger; why was it that you fled?”

“We fled in slaves’ dresses, O Caesar, because otherwise we should long ago have been strangled like bandits in the Tullianum.  Lentulus Crus drove us with threats from the Senate.  On the bridge, but for the favour of the gods, his lictors would have taken us.  We were chased by Pompeius’s foot soldiers as far as Janiculum.  We ran away from his cavalry.  If they hate us, your humble friends, so bitterly, how much the more must they hate you!”

“And the tribunes, and Curio, and Caelius are on their way hither?” asked Caesar.

“They will be here very soon.”

“That is well,” replied the proconsul; then, with a totally unexpected turn, “Quintus Drusus, what do you advise me to do?”

“I—­I advise, Imperator?” stammered the young man.