It had now long been day. The fugitives, quite tired out, retired to their couches; Aurelius only still found something to do. First he went to Herodianus’ cabin; he had taken himself to bed as soon as he had come on board, and all the bustle of the last hour or two had not waked him. He now lifted up a bruised and swollen face, and complained of severe pain. His fall on the way had shaken him considerably. Aurelius helped him to move, and then applied a bandage and a herb poultice to his arm and shoulder, and in five minutes the patient was asleep again.
Aurelius, however, still could not rest. He went next to the fugitive entrusted to his protection by Quintus Claudius: Eurymachus. He found him excited, pale, and breathless. He was in a high fever, and sitting up in bed. Through the half-opened port-hole of his cabin he had listened in alarm to the mysterious confusion and noise; he imagined that the pursuit had been on his account, and it had distressed him beyond measure to think that the magnanimous Aurelius should be involved in his hapless fate. When the Batavian had reassured him on this point, he fell back on his pillows with a few words of gratitude. A sort of ague fit shook his frame, and his teeth chattered as if with cold.
“How strange,” said Aurelius to himself. “This man, who is so indifferent to danger for himself, is ready to die with anxiety for the safety of his preserver!”
He went back to his own room, and threw himself, wrapped in his cloak as he was, on the outside of his bed. He tried to recall all the events of the last twenty-four hours, but his thoughts became confused. He seemed to see a sweet maiden form stooping over him—to see her smile and feel her kiss his forehead. “Claudia!” he sighed and shivered; then he fell quite asleep—and he was at Baiae, in the quiet, peaceful garden, far from the world of hatred, tyranny, and persecutions. A lovely dream! as distinct from the realities of the present, as a bright star in the dark vault of night.
CHAPTER X.
All this time the wily Barbillus had not been idle. He knew too well the whole meaning of a wish of Domitian’s, particularly when the wish was expressed in such a manner, as his desire to conquer Cornelia had been. Besides, the priest had only too much reason to fear the Emperor, in relation to his high pretensions to prophetic powers. More than once had Domitian shown his aversion to Chaldaeans, mathematicians, and seers generally, and had banished them from Rome by special edicts. These edicts might at any moment be turned against Barbillus, even though he also officiated as the priest of a tolerated faith, and hitherto had had no cause to dread his imperial patron, whom he had found means to amuse and manage. Again, and above all, his vanity was at stake; he felt the failure of the elaborately-contrived mummery as personally humiliating, and longed to purge himself of the charge of clumsiness in the Emperor’s eyes.
On the following day, therefore, he set to work again, and began to reconnoitre the ground. His spies, under a variety of excuses, made their way into Cornelius’ house, eavesdropping and bribing the slaves. Now as a Syrian yarn-seller, now as a shipwrecked sailor humbly praying the ostiarius to admit him to shelter, or as a dealer in Egyptian charms—one or another of the indefatigable Oriental’s tools contrived to see and hear something, without their presence being thought strange in a house where so many came and went. Thus Barbillus learned many details as to Cornelia’s habits and mode of life, which might possibly prove of use, though he did not as yet see the connection they would have with his schemes.
However, the results of this system of espionage seemed more tangibly satisfactory when, on the second day after beginning operations, there was put into his hands the note which Caius Aurelius had written and left on the occasion of his nocturnal visit.
The slave-girl, who had not parted with it for anything less than gold, declared that she had plainly seen and heard Cornelia, when she took it from the Batavian and promised to deliver it to her uncle. Since it could hardly be doubted that it was a precautionary warning from a fellow-conspirator, it would not be difficult to make it appear that Cornelia must be a party to the plot. To an unprejudiced judge, it was indeed self-evident that Cornelia had no suspicion of the importance of this bit of writing; otherwise she would have taken better care of it, and would not have been so foolish as to leave it lying by the lamp when she went to bed. But all that Barbillus wanted was some valid excuse for a hold over the young girl.