CHAPTER IX.
GLYCERIA.
Domitia returned to her apartments, quivering like an aspen in a light air; but no sooner was she there, than she summoned Eboracus, and said to him:—
“Be speedy. Follow Paris, and protect him. There is evil planned against him. Fly—lest you be too late.”
The slave departed at once.
Domitia paced the room, in an agony of mind, now shivering with cold, then with face burning. But it was not the humiliations to which she had been subjected that so affected her,—it was fear of what she suspected was meditated against the actor, and through him against Glyceria.
A cold sweat broke out on her brow, and icy tears formed on her long eyelashes. It seemed to her that for her to show favor to any one, was to bring destruction on that person. And hatred towards the Emperor became in her heart more intense and bitter.
She could think of nothing else but the danger that menaced Paris. She went out on the terrace, and the wind blowing over her moist brow chilled her; she drew her mantle more closely around her, and re-entered the palace. Already night was falling, for the days were becoming short.
Her heart cried out for something to which to cling, for some one to whom to appeal against the overwhelming evil and tyranny that prevailed.
Was there no power in earth above the Cæsar? There was none. No power in heaven? She could not tell; all there was dark and doubtful. There was a Nemesis—but slow of step, and only overtaking the evil-doer when too late to prevent the misery he wrought, sometimes so lagging as not to catch him at all, and so blind as often to strike the innocent in place of the guilty. No cry of the sufferer could reach this torpid Nemesis and rouse her to quicker action. She was a deity bungling, deaf and blind.