Corvinus was enraged at himself; for he saw how much better he would have gained his ends, by putting a sharp, intelligent prætorian on duty, instead of a sottish, savage foreigner. “Well,” he said, in the worst of humors, “you will have to answer to the emperor for all this; and you know he is not accustomed to pass over offences.”
“Look you now, Herr Krummbeiner,” returned the soldier, with a look of sly stolidity; “as to that, we are pretty well in the same boat.” (Corvinus turned pale, for he knew this was true.) “And you must contrive something to save me, if you want to save yourself. It was you the emperor made responsible, for the what-d’ye-call-it?—that board.”
“You are right, my friend; I must make it out that a strong body attacked you, and killed you at your post. So shut yourself up in quarters for a few days, and you shall have plenty of beer, till the thing blows over.”
The soldier went off, and concealed himself. A few days after, the dead body of a Dacian, evidently murdered, was washed on the banks of the Tiber. It was supposed he had fallen in some drunken row; and no further trouble was taken about it. The fact was indeed so; but Corvinus could have given the best account of the transaction. Before, however, leaving the ill-omened spot in the Forum, he had carefully examined the ground, for any trace of the daring act; when he picked up, close under the place of the edict, a knife, which he was sure he had seen at school, in possession of one of his companions. He treasured it up, as an implement of future vengeance, and hastened to provide another copy of the decree.
An Emblem of Paradise, found in the Catacombs.
CHAPTER XV.
EXPLANATIONS.
At an early hour the places of public fashionable resort were all occupied with the same theme. In the great Antonian Thermæ a group of regular frequenters were talking it over. There were Scaurus the lawyer, and Proculus, and Fulvius, and the philosopher Calpurnius, who seemed very busy with some musty volumes, and several others.