"A befouled nest!" said Narcissus.
"An Augean stable with a Hercules who doesn't do his work, I grant you!
But we can substitute another Hercules."
"Pertinax is too old," Narcissus objected, weakening, a trifle sulkily.
"He is old enough to wish to die in honor rather than dishonor. You and I, Narcissus, have no honor—you a slave and I an outlaw. Let us win, then, honor for ourselves by helping to heal Rome of her dishonor!"
"Oh well, have it your own way," said Narcissus, unconvinced. "A brass as for your honor! The alternative is death or liberty in either case, and as for me, I prefer friendship to religion, so I will follow you, whichever road you take. Now go. These fellows mustn't recognize you. It is time to take them one by one into the exercising yard. I daren't take more than one at a time or they'd kill me even with the blunted practise-weapons. I wish they might face Commodus as boldly as they tackle me! I am a weary man, and many times a bruised one, I can tell you, when the night comes, after putting twenty of them through their paces."
IX. STEWED EELS
The training arena where Commodus worked off energy and kept his Herculean muscles in condition was within the palace grounds, but the tunnel by which he reached it continued on and downward to the Circus Maximus, so that he could attend the public spectacles without much danger of assassination.
Nevertheless, a certain danger still existed. One of his worst frenzies of proscription had been started by a man who waited for him in the tunnel, and lost his nerve and then, instead of killing him, pretended to deliver an insulting message from the senate. Since that time the tunnel had been lined with guards at regular intervals, and when Commodus passed through his mysterious "double" was obliged to walk in front of him surrounded by enough attendants to make any one not in the secret believe the double was the emperor himself.
No man in the known world was less incapable than Commodus of self- defense against an armed man. There was no deception about his feats of strength and skill; he was undoubtedly the most terrific fighter and consummate athlete Rome had ever seen, and he was as proud of it as Nero once was of his "golden voice." But, as he explained to the fawning courtiers who shouldered one another for a place beside him as he hurried down the tunnel:
"How could Rome replace me? Yesterday I had to order a slave beaten to death for breaking a vase of Greek glass. I can buy a hundred slaves for half what that glass cost Hadrian. And I could have a thousand better senators tomorrow than the fools who belch and stammer in the curia, the senate house. But where would you find another Commodus if some lurking miscreant should stab me from behind? It was the geese that saved the capitol. You cacklers can preserve your Commodus."