"But my lord——"
"Silence now," he said with some of his habitual impatience; "send my litter and bearers home; bring me the mantle I required, and do thou and Nola follow me."
Reluctantly the old man obeyed.
"My gracious lord will be footsore—the way is long and ill-paved——" he muttered, half audibly, even as he made his way to the rear of the bosquet of lilies where a group of slaves stood waiting desultorily.
Anon he returned carrying a mantle of dark woollen stuff, and Taurus Antinor, having wrapped himself in this, slowly turned to walk down the hill.
Leaving the imperial palaces behind him, he went rapidly along the silent and deserted street. It wound its tortuous way at first on the crest of the hill, skirting the majestic temple of Magna Mater with its elevated portico and noble steps that lost themselves in the shadows of labyrinthine colonnades.
The street itself—narrow and unpaved—was in places rendered almost impassable by the piles of constructor's materials and rubbish that encumbered it at every step—debris or future requisites of the gigantic and numberless building operations which the mad Emperor pursued with that feverish energy and maniacal restlessness that characterised his every action. Palaces here and temples there, a bridge over the Forum, a new circus, new baths, the constant pulling down of one edifice to make room for the construction of another: all this work—commenced and still unfinished—had changed the whole aspect of the great city, turning it into a wilderness of enormous beams and huge blocks of uncut marble and stone that littered its every way.
But Taurus Antinor paid no heed to the roughness and inaccessibility of the road. Unlike the rich patricians of the time he hated the drowsy indolence of progress in a litter, and after the fatigues of a nerve-racking day, the difficulties of ill-paved roads were in harmony with his present mood.
Assuring himself that old Folces and the girl Nola were close at his heels, he stepped briskly along the now precipitous incline of the hill. The rapid movement did him good. The air came to him from across the gardens of the palaces, sweetly scented by late lilies and clumps of dying roses.
Soon he had left the great circus behind him too, and now he started climbing again, for his way led him upwards on the slope of the Aventine Hill. The silence here seemed more absolute than among the dwellings of the rich, for there, at times, a night watchman would emerge from a cross-road and give challenge to the belated passer-by, whilst a certain bustle of suspended animation always reigned around the palace of the Emperor even during the hours of sleep; some of his slaves and guard were always kept awake, ready to minister to any fancy or caprice that might seize the mad Cæsar in the middle of the night.