"You chose him——"
"Since then he hath become a besotted despot."
"Still your Emperor—to whom you owe your dignities, your power, your rank——"
"Thou dost defend him warmly, O praefect of Rome," suddenly interposed Hortensius Martius who had followed every phase of the discussion with heated brow and eyes alert and glowing. "Thou art ready to continue this life of submission to a maniacal tyrant, to a semi-bestial mountebank——"
"The life which I lead is of mine own making," rejoined Taurus Antinor proudly; "the life ye lead is the one ye have chosen."
And with significant glance his dark eyes took in every detail of the disordered room—the littered table, the luxurious couches, the numberless empty dishes and broken goblets as well as the flushed faces and the trembling hands, and involuntarily, perhaps, a look of harsh contempt spread over his face.
Hortensius caught the look and winced under it; the words that had accompanied it had struck him as with a lash, and further whipped up his already violent rage.
"And," he retorted with an evil sneer, "to the Cæsar thou wilt render homage even in his most degraded orgies, and wilt lick the dust from off his shoes when he hath kicked thee in the mouth."
Slowly Taurus Antinor turned to him, and Hortensius Martius appeared just then so like a naughty child, that the look of harshness died out of the praefect's eyes, and a smile almost of amusement, certainly of indulgence, lit up for a moment the habitual sternness of his face.
"Loyalty to Cæsar," he said simply, "doth not mean obsequiousness, as all Roman patricians should know, oh Hortensius!"