"Ate and the Furies!" he said in a strained whisper. "What hath happened but that Cæsar revived while the guards were hailing me as Imperator!"
A hater of pork, a wearer of gowns, a mutterer of prayers, a bearded clown of a rustic! And she, it was, whom he had rejected!
"Stand like a frozen pigeon!" Caligula hissed, "while I tell thee of my death! He knew what the shouts meant! He showed his teeth like a panther, transfixed me with his dead eyes and signed for wine! When he hath strength enough to order it, and breath enough to form the words—"
And she had not urged the Herod's death for his sake, and thereby imperiled her own living with Flaccus; she had sent him a passport to Capri and one to Misenum, and rescued him from the admiring eyes of other women, to make sure of him—and he had flung her away, at last!
"He will starve me to death: drown me in the Mamertine!" Caligula raged under his breath. "Starve me, I say! Speak, corpse! What shall I do!"
Her rage by this time had so filled her that it meant to have expression or have her life.
"Kill him!" she hissed through her teeth.
It was Marsyas' sentence, but it fell upon Tiberius.
Caligula ceased to tremble and stared at her with a strange look in his bird-like eyes.
"How?" he asked.