“Ah!” he said aloud, quoting the vulgar proverb, “’the rod is the mother of reason.’  Well, can you find her?”

“Surely, if I have time.  The man who can afford to pay two thousand sestertia for a single slave cannot easily be hidden.”

“Two thousand sestertia!” exclaimed Domitian astonished.  “Tell me that story.  Slaves, give Saturius his robe and fall back—­no, not too far, he may be treacherous.”

The chamberlain threw the garment over his bleeding shoulders and fastened it with a trembling hand.  Then he told his tale, adding: 

“Oh! my lord, what could I do?  You have not enough money at hand to pay so huge a sum.”

“Do, fool?  Why you should have bought her on credit and left me to settle the price afterwards.  Oh! never mind Titus, I could have outwitted him.  But the mischief is done; now for the remedy, so far as it can be remedied,” he added, grinding his teeth.

“That I must seek to-morrow, lord.”

“To-morrow?  And what will you do to-morrow?”

“To-morrow I will find where the girl’s gone, or try to, and then—­why he who has bought her might die and—­the rest will be easy.”

“Die he surely shall be who has dared to rob Domitian of his darling,” answered the prince with an oath.  “Well, hearken, Saturius, for this night you are spared, but be sure that if you fail for the second time you also shall die, and after a worse fashion than I promised you.  Now go, and to-morrow we will take counsel.  Oh! ye gods, why do you deal so hardly with Domitian?  My soul is bruised and must be comforted with poesy.  Rouse that Greek from his bed and send him to me.  He shall read to me of the wrath of Achilles when they robbed him of his Briseis, for the hero’s lot is mine.”

So this new Achilles departed, now that his rage had left him, weeping maudlin tears of disappointed passion, to comfort his “bruised soul” with the immortal lines of Homer, for when he was not merely a brute Domitian fancied himself a poet.  It was perhaps as well for his peace of mind that he could not see the face of Saturius, as the chamberlain comforted his bruised shoulders with some serviceable ointment, or hear the oath which that useful and industrious officer uttered as he sought his rest, face downwards, since for many days thereafter he was unable to lie upon his back.  It was a very ugly oath, sworn by every god who had an altar in Rome, with the divinities of the Jews and the Christians thrown in, that in a day to come he would avenge Domitian’s rods with daggers.  Had the prince been able to do so, there might have risen in his mind some prescience of a certain scene, in which he must play a part on a far-off but destined night.  He might have beheld a vision of himself, bald, corpulent and thin-legged, but wearing the imperial robes of Caesar, rolling in a frantic struggle for life upon the floor of his bed-chamber, at death grips with one Stephanus, while an old chamberlain named Saturius drove a dagger again and again into his back, crying at each stroke: