The feeling against the barbarians had made such progress amongst all Italians, that Cethegus could entertain the project of striking a blow without the help of the Byzantines, as soon as ever Rome was sufficiently fortified.
"For," he repeatedly told himself, "all foreign liberators are easily summoned, but with difficulty discarded."
Musing thus, Cethegus reposed upon his lectus. He laid aside Cæsar's "Civil Wars," the leaves of which he had been turning over, and said to himself:
"The gods must have great things in store for me; whenever I fall, it is like a cat--upon my feet and unhurt. Ah! when things go well with us, we like to share our content with others. But it is too dangerous a pleasure to put trust in another, and Silence is the only faithful goddess. And yet one is human, and would like----"
Here a slave entered--the old Ostiarius Fidus--and silently handed to Cethegus a letter upon a flat golden salver.
"The bearer waits," he said, and left the room.
Cethegus took up the letter. But as soon as he recognised the design upon the wax seal which secured the string twisted round the tablets--the Dioscuri--he cried eagerly, "From Julius--at a happy hour!" hastily untied the string, opened the tablets, and read, his cold and pale countenance flushed with a warmth of pleasure usually wholly strange to him:
"'To Cethegus the Prefect, from Julius Montanus.
"'How long it is, my fatherly preceptor'--(by Jupiter! that sounds frosty)--'that I have delayed sending you the greeting which I owe you. The last time I wrote from the green banks of the Ilissos, where I sought for traces of Plato in the desolated groves of the Akademia, but found none. I know well that my letter was not cheerful. The sad philosophers, wandering in the lonely schools, surrounded by the oppressions of the Emperor, the suspicion of the priests, and the coldness of the multitude, could only arouse my compassion. My soul was gloomy; I knew not wherefore. I blamed my ingratitude to you, the most generous of all benefactors.'
"He has never given me such intolerable names before," observed Cethegus.