“You are a confidential servant of my kinsman’s? You are attached to his person, and always to be found in his household?” she asked, more with a view of detaining him than for any fixed purpose.
“I would give my life for Licinius!” was the prompt and spirited reply.
“But you are gentle born,” she resumed, with increasing interest; “how came you in your present dress, your present station? Licinius has never mentioned you to me. I do not even know your name. What is it?”
“Esca,” answered the slave proudly, and looking the while anything but a slave.
“Esca!” she repeated, dwelling on the syllables, with a slow soft cadence; “Esca! ’Tis none of our Latin names; but that I might have known already. Who and what are you?”
There was something of defiance in the melancholy tone with which he answered—
“A prince in my own country, and a chief of ten thousand. A barbarian and a slave in Rome.”
She gave him her hand to kiss, with a gesture of pity that was almost a caress, and then, as though ashamed of her own condescension, bade the Liburnians angrily to “go on.”
Esca looked long and wistfully after the litter as it disappeared; but Hirpinus, clapping him on the back with his heavy hand, burst into a hearty laugh while he declared—
“’Tis a clear case, comrade. ‘Came, saw, and conquered,’ as the great soldier said. I have known it a hundred times, but always to men of muscle like thee and me. By Castor and Pollux! lad, thou art in luck. Ay, ay, ’tis always so. She takes thee for a gladiator, and they’ll look at nothing but a gladiator now. Come on, brother; we’ll drink a cup to every letter of her name!”
It was the cool and calming hour of sunset. Esca was strolling quietly homewards after the pursuits of the day. He had emptied a wineskin with Hirpinus; and, resisting that worthy’s entreaties to mark so auspicious a meeting by a debauch, had accompanied him to the gymnasium, where the Briton’s magnificent strength and prowess raised him higher than ever in the opinion of the experienced athlete. Untiring as were the trained muscles of the professional, he found himself unable to cope with the barbarian in such exercises as demanded chiefly untaught physical power and length of limb. In running, leaping, and wrestling, Esca was more than a match for the gladiator. In hurling the quoit, and fencing with wooden foils, the latter’s constant practice gave him the advantage, and when he fastened round his wrists and hands the leathern thong or _cestus_, used for the same purpose as our modern boxing‐glove, and proposed a round or two of that manly exercise to conclude with, he little doubted that his own science and experience would afford him an easy victory. The result, however, was far different from his expectations. His antagonist’s powers were especially adapted to this particular kind of contest; his length of limb, his quickness of eye, hand, and foot, his youthful elasticity of muscle, and his unfailing wind, rendered him an invincible combatant, and it was with something like pique that Hirpinus was compelled to confess as much to himself.