"I had smuggled a few clever men into the city. They excited the inhabitants to a midnight revolt. All the Goths in the city were slain; only five hundred men escaped into the Mausoleum of Hadrian, and continue to defend it."
Faber took courage to put in a word.
"We sent eight messengers to you. Prefect, one after the other."
"Away with this man!" cried Narses, signing to his officers. "Yes," he continued quietly, "the citizens of Rome think lovingly of the Prefect, to whom they owe so much: two sieges, hunger, pestilence, and the burning of the Capitol! But the messengers sent to you always lost their way, and fell into the hands of the Longobardians, who, no doubt, slew them. But the embassy sent to me by the Holy Father, Pelagius, reached me safely, and I have concluded an agreement, of which you, Prefect of Rome, will surely approve."
"In any case, I shall not be able to annul it."
"The good citizens of Rome fear nothing so much as a third siege. They have stipulated that we shall undertake nothing that can lead to another fight for their city. They write that the Goths in the Mausoleum will soon succumb to hunger; that they themselves can defend their walls; and they have sworn only to deliver up their city, after the destruction of those Goths, to their natural protector and chief, the Prefect of Rome. Are you content with that, Cethegus? Read the agreement. Give it to him, Basiliskos."
Cethegus read the paper with deep and joyful emotion. So they had not forgotten him, his Romans! So now, when everything was coming to a crisis, they called, not the hated Byzantines, but himself, their patron, back to the Capitol! He again felt at the height of power.
"I am content," he said, returning the roll.
"I have promised," continued Narses, "to make no attempt to get the city into my power by force. First King Teja must follow King Totila. Then Rome--and many other things. Accompany me, Prefect, to the council of war."
When Cethegus left the council in the tent of Narses, and asked after Tullus Faber, not a trace of the latter was to be found.