"Silverius, this moment repays me for your victory in the Catacombs. Now we are quits!"
CHAPTER XII.
As soon as the Bishop had left the tent, Belisarius rose eagerly from his seat, hurried to the Prefect, and embraced him.
"Accept my thanks, Cethegus Cæsarius! Your reward will not be wanting. I will tell the Emperor that for him you have to-day saved Rome."
But Cethegus smiled.
"My acts reward themselves."
The intellectual struggle, the rapid alternation of anger, fear, anxiety, and triumph had exhausted the hero Belisarius more than half a day of battle. He longed for rest and refreshment, and dismissed his generals, none of whom left the tent without speaking a word of acknowledgment to the Prefect.
The latter saw that his superiority was felt by all, even by Belisarius. It pleased him that, in one and the same hour, he had ruined the scheming Bishop and humbled the proud Byzantines.
But he did not idly revel in the feeling of victory. He knew the danger of sleeping upon laurels; laurel stupefies.
He decided to follow up his victory, to use at once the intellectual superiority over the hero of Byzantium which he undoubtedly possessed at this moment, and to strike his long-prepared and principal blow.