"And worn with much riding," said the young knight.
"I have a message for you. It is from the king."
"He would see me at once," said Vergilius, having read it.
"The sooner you go the more gracious you will be like to find him," said Manius, with a smile.
"My apparel! It is on the transport and has not yet arrived."
"But you have arrived, and forget not you are in the land of Herod—a most impatient king."
"He will not know, however, that we have come," Vergilius answered.
"Friend of Caesar," said the captain of the guard, "within an hour he will know everything you have done since you entered the city—whither you went, to whom you spoke, and what you said, and perhaps even what you thought."
CHAPTER 12
The characters of Herod and Augustus were as far apart as their capitals. Extremes of temperament were in these two. The Roman was cold, calm, of unfailing prudence; the Jew hot-blooded, reckless, and warmed by a word into startling and frank ferocity. The one was keen and delicate, the other blunt and robust. The emperor was a fox, the king a lion. Herod and his people were now worried with mutual distrust. He had no faith in any man, and no man—not even the emperor by whose sufferance he held the crown—had any faith in him. The king feared the people and the people feared the king.