“He himself acted on this rule.  To him obstacles existed only to be removed, and he taught me, too, to give myself neither peace nor rest, and not to spare the life of a foe.—­That festival secured my father the suffrages of the Romans.  Meanwhile Pescennius Niger rose up in the East with a large army and took the field against Severus.  But my father was not the man to hesitate.  Within a few months of the obsequies of Pertinax his opponent was a headless corpse.

“There was yet another obstacle to be removed.  You have heard of Clodius Albinus.  My father had adopted him and raised him to share his throne.  But Severus could not divide the rule with any man.

“When I was nine years old I saw, after the battle of Lugdunum, the dead face of Albinus’s head; it was set up in front of the Curia on a lance.

“I now was the second personage in the empire, next to my father; the first among the youth of the whole world, and the future emperor.  When I was eleven the soldiers hailed me as Augustus; that was in the war against the Parthians, before Ktesiphon.  But they did the same to Geta.  This was like wormwood in the sweet draught; and if then—­But what can a girl care about the state, and the fate of rulers and nations?”

“Yes, go on,” said Melissa.  “I see already what you are coming to.  You disliked the idea of sharing your power with another.”

“Nay,” cried Caracalla, vehemently, “I not only disliked it, it was intolerable, impossible!  What I want you to see is that I did not grudge my brother his share of my father’s inheritance, like any petty trader.  The world—­that is the point—­the world itself was too small for two of us.  It was not I, but Fate, which had doomed Geta to die.  I am certain of this, and so must you be.  Yes, it was Fate.  Fate prompted the child’s little hand to attempt its brother’s life.  And that was long before my brain could form a thought or my baby-lips could stammer his hated name.”

“Then you tried to kill your brother even in infancy?” asked Melissa, and her large eyes dilated with horror as she gazed at the terrible narrator.  But Caracalla went on, in an apologetic tone: 

“I was then but two years old.  It was at Mediolanum, soon after Geta’s birth.  An egg was found in the court of the palace; a hen had laid it close to a pillar.  It was of a purple hue-red all over like the imperial mantle, and this indicated that the newly born infant was destined to sovereignty.  Great was the rejoicing.  The purple marvel was shown even to me who could but just walk.  I, like a naughty boy, flung it down; the shell cracked, and the contents poured out on the pavement.  My mother saw it, and her exclamation, ’Wicked child, you have murdered your brother!’ was often repeated to me in after-years.  It never struck me as particularly motherly.”

Here he paused, gazing meditatively into vacancy, and then asked the girl, who had listened intently: