"'Tis well. But, as you say, there are two gates to be watched."
"Yes; and so I have engaged Perseus, my brother, to be my fellow-spy. He will watch the Gate of St. Paul, I the Portuensian Gate. You may depend upon it, that before sunrise to-morrow one or other of us will know who is the Prefect's Egeria."
Exactly opposite the Gate of St. Paul, at about three arrow-shots, distance from the outermost trench of the city, lay a large and ancient building, the Basilica Sancti Pauli extra muros, or St. Paul's outside the walls, which only completely disappeared at the time of the siege of Rome by the Connétable of Bourbon.
Originally a temple dedicated to Jupiter Stator, it had been consecrated to the Apostle two centuries before the time of which we speak, but the bronze colossal statue of the bearded god still stood erect; only the flaming thunderbolts had been taken from its right hand, and a crucifix put in their place; otherwise the sturdy and bearded figure was well suited to its new name.
It was the sixth hour of the night.
The moon shone brightly above the Eternal City, and shed her silver light upon the battlements and the plain between the Roman ramparts and the Basilica, the black shadow of which fell towards the Gothic camp.
The guard at the Gate of St. Paul had just been relieved. But seven men had gone out, and only six re-entered.
The seventh turned his back to the gate and walked out into the open field.
Cautiously he chose his path: cautiously he avoided the numerous steel-traps, covered pits and self-shooting poisoned arrows which were strewn everywhere about, and which had already brought destruction to many a Goth while assaulting the city.
This man appeared to know them all, and easily avoided them. He also carefully shunned the moonlight, seeking the shade of the jutting bastions, and springing from one tree to another.