"Are you ready!" he asked.
"Perfectly."
"At what time shall it take place?"
"At the moment when the King mounts his horse in the courtyard of the palace in order to ride to meet Belisarius. We have thought of everything."
"Once more of everything!" said Cethegus, with a laugh. "Yet one thing you have left to me. It is certain that as soon as our plan has succeeded and become known, that the barbarians all over the country will fly into a rage. Revenge and compassion for their King may cause them to commit furious deeds. But all their enthusiasm for Witichis and anger against us would be nipped in the bud; they would consider themselves betrayed by their King, and not by us, if we could get him to sign a document to the purport that he did not surrender the city to Belisarius as the King of the Goths and a rebel against the Emperor, but simply to Justinian's commander-in-chief. Then the revolt of Belisarius, which will actually not take place, would seem to the Goths to have been a mere lie invented by their King in order to hide from them the shame of the surrender."
"That would be excellent; but Witichis will not do it."
"Knowingly, scarcely; but perhaps unknowingly. He has only signed the treaty in the original yet?"
"He has signed only once."
"And the document is in his possession? Good. I will make him sign the duplicate which I have drawn up, so that Belisarius also may possess the valuable document."
Procopius looked at it.