"Wait!" said the priest of Eleusis.
"Dare!" said Nogodarès.
Julian stood between the two, in perplexity scrutinising both.
The faces of the augurs remained impenetrable.
"What is to be done?" he murmured to himself. Then he remembered, and exclaimed joyfully:
"One moment! I have an ancient book in my library, Concerning Contradiction in Auguries; we shall see!"
He hurried to the library; but in a passage he encountered the bishop Dorotheus, in sacerdotal dress, bearing the crucifix and the sacred Viaticum.
"What is this?" asked Julian.
"The Viaticum for your wife, who is dying, O Cæsar!"
Dorotheus looked with severity at the robes of Julian, his pale face, and his blood-stained hands.