“Assassination!” interrupted Caracalla with furious joy.  “That was the only thing left undone!  Bring the murderer!  But first”—­and he addressed himself to Aristides—­“close the city gates and the harbor.  Not a man, not a ship must be let through without being searched.  The vessels that have weighed anchor since daybreak must be followed and brought back.  Mounted Numidians under efficient officers must scour the high-roads as soon as the gate-keepers have been examined.  Every house must be open to your men, every temple, every refuge.  Seize Heron, the gem-cutter, his daughter, and his two sons.  Also—­Diodoros is the young villain’s name?—­him, his parents, and everybody connected with them!  The physician knows where they are to be found.  Alive, do you hear?—­not dead!  I will have them alive!  I give you till midnight!  Your head, if you let the jade and her brothers escape!”

With drooping head the unhappy officer departed.  On the threshold he was met by Martialis, the praetorian centurion.  After him, his hands bound behind his back, walked the criminal.  A deep flush overspread his handsome face, his eyes glowed under the too lofty brow with the fierce light of fever, his waving locks stood out in wild confusion round his head, while the finely cut upper lip with its disdainful curl seemed the very seat of scorn and bitterest contempt.  Every feature wore that same expression, and not a trace of fear or regret.  But his panting breast betrayed to the physician’s first glance that they had here to deal with a sick man in raging fever.

They had already torn off his mantle and discovered beneath its folds the sharp-edged butcher’s knife which plainly betrayed his intentions.  He had penetrated to the first antechamber when a soldier of the Germanic body-guard laid hold on him.  Martialis had him by the girdle now, and the emperor looked sharply and mistrustfully at the praetorian, as he asked if it were he who had captured the assassin.

The centurion replied that he had not.  Ingiomarus, the German, had noticed the knife; he, Martialis, was here only in right of his privilege as a praetorian to bring such prisoners before great Caesar.

Caracalla bent a searching gaze upon the soldier; for he thought he recognized in him the man who had aroused his envy and whose happiness he had once greatly desired to damp, when against orders he had received his wife and child in the camp.  Recollections rose in his mind that drove the hot blood to his cheek, and he cried, disdainfully: 

“I might have guessed it!  What can be expected beyond the letter of their service from one who so neglects his duties?  Did you not disport yourself with lewd women in the camp before my very eyes, setting at naught the well-known rules?  Hands off the prisoner!  This is your last day as praetorian and in Alexandria.  As soon as the harbor is opened—­to-morrow, I expect—­you go on board the ship that carries reinforcements to Edessa.  A winter on the Pontus will cool your lascivious blood.”