“No, no; let me go, Quadratus, let me go.”
“Where are you running to in such a hurry? can I help you?” asked his captor, still holding him fast.
“Let me loose, I say, or he will be gone.”
“Who will be gone?”
“Pancratius,” answered Corvinus, “who just now insulted my father.”
“Pancratius!” said Quadratus, looking round, and seeing that he had got clear off; “I do not see him.” And he let him go; but it was too late. The youth was safe at Diogenes’s, in the Suburra.
While this scene was going on, the prefect, mortified, ordered Catulus to see the body thrown into the Tiber. But another officer, muffled in his cloak, stepped aside and beckoned to Catulus, who understood the sign, and stretched out his hand to receive a purse held out to him.
“Out of the Porta Capena, at Lucina’s villa, an hour after sunset,” said Sebastian.
“It shall be delivered there safe,” said the executioner.
“Of what do you think did that poor girl die?” asked a spectator from his companion, as they went out.