“The temple of your divine family is in flames.”
“What care I? I will rebuild it—the majesty, the divinity of the Flavians resides not in stones and marble—it is incorporate in Me. I may have been in danger for a moment. Now I snap my fingers in the face of that blunderer Jove, who burnt a hole in my pillow instead of transfixing my head. And yon old Chronos—” he made a sign of contempt towards scythed Time, “I defy thee and thy bucket of blood. Twelve o’clock! In spite of Jove’s bolt, and the summons of Cornelia—I shall be asleep by that hour.”
“I pray the Gods it may be so.”
Then Domitian went out precipitately. His defiant attitude, his daring talk did not serve to disguise the alarm which he felt. Suddenly, after having left the room he turned, came back and said, “Domitia! What sword is that? What need has a woman with a sword?”
He pointed to that of Corbulo, suspended against the wall.
He went to it and took it down.
“Leave it,” said she harshly. “It is that on which my father fell. It is stained likewise with the blood of Nero.”
He held it by the scabbard. She caught the handle and, as he turned, drew forth the blade.
At the same moment he heard steps in the passage approaching the door, and without noticing that he held but the sheath, or else purposing to demand the weapon itself later, when the interruption was over, he walked towards the entrance uttering an expression of impatience, holding the empty scabbard in his right hand.
In the doorway stood Stephanus, a freedman, the steward of Flavia Domitilla, wife, or rather widow of Clemens, whom Domitian had recently put to death. Domitilla had been exiled, and the Emperor had appropriated to his own use the estates of his kinsman.