“Take the beggar to the camp,” said the tribune, as he rode away, “I hate all scoundrels”; and he glanced round the spectators.
“Then,” exclaimed I, after him, as a parting blow, “you have at least one virtue, for you can never be charged with self-love.”
This woman-war made me popular on the spot. The tribune had no sooner turned his horse’s head than the officers clustered together in laughter. Even the iron visages of the troopers relaxed into grim smiles. The old jocular captain was the only one still grave.
“There rides not this day under the canopy of heaven,” murmured he, “a greater puppy than Caius Sempronius Catulus, tribune of the thirteenth legion by his mother’s morals and the Emperor’s taste. Why did not the coxcomb stay at home, and show off his trappings among the supper-eaters of the Palatine? He might have powdered his ringlets with gold-dust, washed his hands in rose-water, and perfumed his handkerchief with myrrh as well there as here, for he does nothing else—except,” and he clenched the heavy hilt of his falchion, “insult men who have seen more battles than he has seen years, who knew better service than bowing in courts, and the least drop of whose blood is worth all that will ever run in his veins. But I have not done with him yet. As for you, friend,” said he, “I am sorry to stop you on your way; but as this affair will be magnified by that fool’s tongue, you must be brought to the procurator. However, the camp is only a few miles off; you will be asked a few questions, and then left to follow your will.”
He little dreamed how I recoiled from that interview.
To shorten the time of my delay, the good-natured old man ordered the squadron to mend their pace, and in half an hour we saw the noon encampment of my sworn enemy, lifting its white tops and scarlet flags among the umbrage of a forest, deep in the valley at our feet.
The squadron drew up at the entrance of the procurator’s tent, and with a crowd of alarmed peasants captured in the course of the day, I was delivered over to be questioned by this man of terror. The few minutes which passed before I was called to take my turn were singularly painful. This was not fear, for the instant sentence of the ax would have been almost a relief from the hopeless and fretful thwartings sown so thickly in my path. But to have embarked in a noble enterprise, and to perish without use; to have arrived almost within sight of the point of my desires, and then, without striking a blow, to be given up to shame, stung me like a serpent.
