“He is a villain!” shrieked the matron—­“the curse, the shame of humanity, a damnable destroyer of peace and honor and life, such as the world has never beheld before!  To kill him would be to earn the gratitude and blessing of the universe.  And you, the scions of a noble house, you, I say, prove that there still are men among so many slaves!  It is Rome herself who calls you through me—­like her, a woman maltreated and wounded to the heart’s core—­to bear arms in her service till she gives you the signal for making an end of the dastardly blood hound!”

The brothers gazed at one another pale and speechless, till at last Nemesianus ventured to say “He deserves to die, we know, a thousand deaths, but we are neither judges nor executioners.  We can not do the work of the assassin.”

“No, lady, we can not,” added Apollinaris, and shook his wounded head energetically.

But the lady, nothing daunted, went on:  “Who has ever called Brutus a murderer?  You are young—­Life lies before you.  To plunge a sword into the heart of this monster is a deed for which you are too good.  But I know a hand that understands its work and would be ready to guide the steel.  Call it out at the right moment and be its guide!”

“And that hand?” Apollinaris asked in anxious expectation.

“It is there,” replied Berenike, pointing to Martialis, who entered the room at that moment.  Again the brothers interchanged looks of doubt, but the lady cried:  “Consider for a moment!  I would fain go hence with the certainty that the one burning desire shall be fulfilled which still warms this frozen heart.”

She motioned to the centurion, left the apartment with him, and preceded him to her own room.  Arrived there, she ordered the astonished freedman Johannes, in his office as notary, to add a codicil to her will.  In the event of her death, she left to Xanthe, the wife of the centurion Martialis, her lawful property the villa at Kanopus, with all it contained, and the gardens appertaining to it, for the free use of herself and her children.

The soldier listened speechless with astonishment.  This gift was worth twenty houses in the city, and made its owner a rich man.  But the testator was scarcely ten years older than his Xanthe, and, as he kissed the hem of his mistress’s robe in grateful emotion, he cried:  “May the gods reward you for your generosity; but we will pray and offer up sacrifices that it may be long before this comes into our hands!”

The lady shook her head with a bitter smile, and, drawing the soldier aside, she disclosed to him in rapid words her determination to quit this life before the praetorians entered the house.  She then informed the horror-stricken man that she had chosen him to be her avenger.  To him, too, the emperor had dealt a malicious blow.  Let him remember that, when the time came to plunge the sword in the tyrant’s heart.  Should this deed, however, cost Martialis his life—­which he had risked in many a battle for miserable pay—­her will would enable his widow to bring up their children in happiness and comfort.