A Christian But a Roman Part 13

"You cannot see him," replied Aper, placing himself before the entrance to Numerian's tent. "No one except myself is allowed to speak to him during his illness. He even gives his orders to the army through me alone."

Mesembrius sniffed the air suspiciously.

"Why does so strong a smell of musk and amber come from this tent?"

"Why?" repeated Aper, his face blanching. "Why do you desire to know, Senator?"

"What?" retorted Mesembrius; "because you lie, Aper, when you say that Numerian issues his orders through you."

"What? What do you mean?" shouted the soldiers who had gathered around the two.

"I mean that Numerian is no longer living!" cried Mesembrius in ringing tones. "No, no, the strong odour of amber issuing from his tent is only to disguise the scent of corruption, and Aper has long taken advantage of you by issuing orders in Numerian's name."

The soldiers forced their way into Numerian's tent and found the old man's words confirmed. Numerian had lain dead a long time; his body was far advanced in decomposition.

Aper was instantly put in chains by the soldiers on account of this deception; in the afternoon an empty throne was erected in the open fields for the election of a new Imperator.

Mesembrius walked through the ranks of the legions, recommending Diocletian, whom the soldiers fairly forced to take his seat upon the throne.

Then Aper was brought forward.

"I charge you, publicly and plainly," said Mesembrius, "with having murdered Numerian and betrayed us to Carinus."

"And we condemn you," roared the army with one voice.

"And I execute the sentence," said Diocletian, stabbing with his own hand the prisoner sentenced by the troops.

In the midst of this wrathful mood Marcius arrived with the order given to him by Manlius and, without knowing what had happened, he delivered his appointment to the new Caesar.

"Who is this?" asked Diocletian, turning to Mesembrius.

"The Caesar's barber."

Diocletian turned smiling to the soldiers.

"Friends! Carinus provided for our beards and sent us a barber with the rank of an Imperator; pray sit down before him and have yourselves shaved. But do you take care not to cut my soldiers' faces, my little friend, for if they should try their big razors on you, you would fare ill."

The soldiers, amid loud shouts of laughter, dragged Marcius off with them, and made him shave their bristling beards.

Scarcely an hour later aevius arrived with the command to dismiss half the army at once.

This enraged the Caesar and the whole body of troops. To a.s.sail their interests so boldly was presumptuous even from the Imperator.

"To the funeral pyre with the messenger and his message!" cried Diocletian, and the poet had already been bound to the huge pile of logs when he sighed bitterly:

"O ye G.o.ds, must I, while still living, witness my own apotheosis?"

Diocletian laughed at the idea and ordered the poet to be brought down from the funeral pyre, contenting himself with putting him in the pillory, after which he sent him back to Rome with a message declaring war against Carinus.

The thunderstorm was rising, though as yet it sent forth no lightning.

In Rome it was openly stated that the army sent to the West, filled with mortal hatred of Carinus, had already reached the Ister, only nothing was said of it in the Caesar's palace. There revelry was perpetual and if, from time to time, any one alluded to Diocletian's approach, he was pitilessly derided.

"Who is this peasant?" asked Manlius. "Who ever heard his name among the patricians of Rome? Who knew his father? His mother, on the contrary, was known by many. She was a slave in the house of Senator Anulinus. Anulinus has a right to demand him as a fruit of his household."

The courtiers laughed at the jest.

"You must know him, Manlius?"

"I have never seen him. I used to be where danger threatened, and I never saw Diocletian. I know him because I was told that he always led the rearguard when we were marching forward, and the vanguard when we were retiring."

Peals of laughter greeted the words.

"And what is the character of his army?" he was asked.

"It is a valiant, obedient body. It has killed three of its Imperators. As for its courage and fearlessness, it is peerless in those qualities, for it retreated from the banks of the Tigris without having seen an enemy. When I tell you that I myself was the greatest hero among them, you can judge of the rest."

"And your news of victories?"

"Were two-thirds inventions. Although we sometimes gained one, we owed it to our superior numbers; but the army must now be greatly reduced by desertion and disease."

This sycophantic nation liked nothing better than to hear the soldiers slandered, and therefore Manlius even slandered himself.

When Diocletian's army approached so close, however, that there could no longer be any doubt as to the danger, the imperial generals urgently pressed the Imperator to prepare for war, and Carinus gathered his troops from the European provinces.

Suddenly the rumour spread that Carinus would command his army in person. He could be seen at two military exercises, the reviews of the troops. Manlius was always at his side, constantly stimulating his vanity or his jealousy by entreating him not to leave the victories to his leaders or commit the course of the campaign to their knowledge and prudence.

"The victorious general is a new foe," Manlius was in the habit of saying, and the Imperator a.s.sumed the chief command of the a.s.sembled forces, and produced no bad effect mounted on his grey charger and clad in a suit of gold armour, with a purple striped violet mantle floating around his shoulders.

On the day before the departure of the army, the leaders went to all the temples in turn, offering sacrifices everywhere, even on the altars of the Egyptian G.o.ds. Manlius a.s.sisted in bringing the animals selected for victims to the haruspex.

The populace listened in solemn devotion to the augur's words.

Quaterquartus extended his arms and, with closed eyes, said, in deep tones:

"This battle will ruin the enemy of Rome."

True, he did not say whom he considered the enemy of Rome--whether Diocletian or Carinus.

At last the imperial procession reached Cybele's temple. Amid a deafening uproar of drums and blaring trumpets, the frantic priestesses were dancing in the open portico, stabbing their bodies with knives, muttering with foaming lips incomprehensible words, and whirling around till, overcome by giddiness, they fell to the floor.

Suddenly a shriek, shriller, more terrible than any other sound in this inharmonious uproar, rang above the din; a shriek so piercing, so heart-rending, that every one gazed trembling in the direction of the sound.

A woman's tall figure stood beneath the pillars; a long white mantle, which she clutched with both hands, floated from her head to her feet.

"Woe betide thee, Rome! Woe betide ye, Roman people! Woe betide thee, Imperator of Rome!"