He passed his hand over his furrowed brow, as though to wake himself from a bad dream; nay, he even found a smile when next his eyes met hers; and those spectators to whom his aspect seemed more absorbing than the horrible slaughter in the arena, looked at each other in amazement, for the indifference or the dissimulation, whichever it might be, with which Caesar regarded this unequaled scene of bloodshed, seemed to them quite incredible.

Never, since his very first visit to a circus, had Caracalla left unnoticed for so long a time the progress of such a battle as this.  However, nothing very remarkable had so far occurred, for the actual seizure of the camp had but just begun with the massacre of the Alemanni and the suicide of the women.

At this moment the gladiator Tarautas, as nimble as a cat and as bloodthirsty as a hungry wolf, sprang on to one of the enemy’s piled-up wagons, and a tall swordsman, with a bear-skin over his shoulder, and long, reddish-gold hair, flew to meet him.

This was no sham German!  Caracalla knew the man.  He had been brought to Rome among the captive chiefs, and, as he had proved to be a splendid horseman, he had found employment in Caesar’s stables.  His conduct had always been blameless till, on the day when Caracalla had entered Alexandria, he had, in a drunken fit, killed first the man set over him, a hot-headed Gaul, and then the two lictors who had attempted to apprehend him.  He was condemned to death, and had been placed on the German side to fight for his life in the arena.

And how he fought!  How he defied the most determined of gladiators, and parried his strokes with his short sword!  This was a combat really worth watching; indeed, it so captivated Caracalla that he forgot everything else.  The name of the German’s antagonist had been applied to him—­Caesar.  Just now the many-voiced yell “Tarautas!” had been meant for him; and, accustomed as he was to read an omen in every incident, he said to himself, and called Fate to witness, that the gladiator’s doom would foreshadow his own.  If Tarautas fell, then Caesar’s days were numbered; if he triumphed, then a long and happy life would be his.

He could leave the decision to Tarautas with perfect confidence; he was the strongest gladiator in the empire, and he was fighting with a sharp sword against the blunt one in his antagonist’s hand, who probably had forgotten in the stable how to wield the sword as he had done of yore.  But the German was the son of a chief, and had followed arms from his earliest youth.  Here it was defense for dear life, however glorious it might be to die under the eyes of the man whom he had learned to honor as the conqueror and tyrant of many nations, among them his own.  So the strong and practiced athlete did his best.