Also they began to show signs of being restless and bored. Some yelled for another criminal.
A seventh lion was loosed at me. He paused like the others and eyed me; then he strolled up to me, snuffed at me, and rubbed his mane against my hip, emitting a rambling purr. I laid my hand on his mane.
Instantly, from all sides at once, rang out cries of,
"Festus!"
"Festus the Beast-Wizard!"
"He's no Phorbas, he's Festus come back!"
I was not far from the Imperial Pavilion and one of the retinue leaned over the podium-coping and called to me. I walked towards him. When I was within earshot he called in Greek:
"The King commands that you lead the beasts back to their cages."
Elated and hoping for a reprieve, for vindication, for life, for rehabilitation, for Imperial favor, I led beast after beast back to its cage on a shaft-lift, or to a door in the wall. When the last one was caged an officer of the Imperial retinue, a frontiersman only lately come to Rome, stepped out of one of the postern doors, two arena-slaves with him. They led me to the center of the arena, trussed my hands behind me, bound my ankles and wrapped round my head an evil-smelling old quilt, probably taken from the cot of some arena-slave housed in some cell under the hollow of the amphitheater. Half suffocated by it, unable to shake it off, for they tied it fast, I stood there, blind, realizing that the Emperor still believed me guilty, was inexorable and meant me to be torn to pieces then and there; believing, as I did, that my immunity from attack was due to the effect of my gaze on the beasts I made mild.
Now you, who read, know that I was not devoured. But I had no shred of hope left. I thought that my end had come. I anticipated only the agony of great fangs rending my flesh.