The dark line of the foliage of spiral cypresses and round-topped pines set off the snowy whiteness of the marble pillars to which they made a background, and Casca was more fascinated by the grandeur of the place itself than interested in watching the race.
Something in the boy’s heart seemed to respond to the beauty around him; and while his friend Fulvius was excited to frenzy at the hairbreadth success which one of the chariots won, Casca was lost in his own meditations, from which he was awoke by the over-turning of one of the unsuccessful carriages, and the cry of pain, which sounded through the first shout of victory.
“The charioteer was killed!” he heard a voice near him say, “and the horses will never be worth a silver coin again. So much the worse for Cassianus, who owns them.”
The fallen horses and the dead charioteer were hastily removed, and then another race was proclaimed by the herald. And again there was breathless anxiety as to the result.
Casca turned presently at the sound of a voice, which seemed familiar.
“Do not push him roughly; he will make way!”
“A cursed dog of a Jew!” was the answer, “standing, forsooth, in the way of a noble.”
“Turn him out!” and then two lictors, who were stationed at the entrance of every one of the galleries, seized the old man roughly by the shoulder, and pushed him before them to the outside of the Circus.
Casca forgot the race and the shouts which proclaimed another victory, forgot Fulvius, and that he had agreed to remain with him and return to supper with him, and followed the old man, who was leaning on the arm of a woman whose voice had been familiar.
“Do not push him roughly,” the voice now said. It was the voice of Ebba, the slave of his mother Cæcilia.