"And you?" asked Galen.
"I will take my own life. I will gladly die when I have ridded Rome of
Commodus."
He paused, awaiting a reply, but Galen appeared almost rudely unconcerned.
"You will not say farewell?"
"It is too soon," Galen answered, folding up his powder in a sheet of parchment, tying it, at great pains to arrange the package neatly.
"Will you not wish me success?"
"That is something, my Sextus, that I have no powders for. I have occasionally cured men. I can set most kinds of fractures with considerable skill, old though I am. And I can divert a man's attention sometimes, so that he lets nature heal him of mysterious diseases. But success is something you have already wished for and have already made or unmade. What you did, my Sextus, is the scaffolding of what you do now; this, in turn, of what you will do next. I gave you my advice. I bade you run away—in which case I would bid you farewell, but not otherwise."
"I will not run."
"I heard you."
"And you said you are sentimental, Galen!"