"Then, to my amazement, the confession of the King of the Highwaymen represented you as a wholly innocent man, incredibly slandered and calumniated, and all by Marcus Galvius Crispinillus, why and for what end was unknown.

"I at once ordered you released and brought to the Palace. Here I have kept you in unmerited confinement until the papers of your traducer could be sifted and I could go over those relevant to your case. Manifestly you never had anything to do with inciting any conspiracy or any march on Rome. All aspersions on you were invented by Crispinillus. I am inexpressibly curious about you. I want you to tell me your story in your own way, in detail, taking your time. In particular I want to learn how you came to be with Maternus and later with the mutineers from Britain. I am at leisure to harken."

He had put me entirely at my ease. Manifestly he wanted to hear my story, was in the mood to listen, and rather enjoyed the respite from care which this carefully arranged interval of leisure gave him. I felt emboldened and began with an explanation of the feud between the Satronians and the Vedians, of the lawsuit between Ducconius Furfur and my uncle, and of his purchase of Marcia from Ummidius Quadratus and his manumission of her.

After these preliminaries I launched into my story. He listened attentively and with every indication of lively interest, with few interruptions. Once he clapped for his pages and had in snow-cooled wine to refresh me and soothe my throat. Upon my account of my wrestle with Nemestronia's leopard he cut in with a series of questions as to my power over animals. When I came to my encounter with Pescennius Niger he was keenly interested, as in my report of his reputation in Ma.r.s.eilles, according to Doris, and uttered one or two remarks. Otherwise he was apparently absorbed in my narrative.

When it was over he said:

"I believe you, your story sounds true; all of it. You have had amazing adventures and have escaped alive manifestly by the special favor of the immortal G.o.ds, particularly of Mercury. Like you, I pay special attention to winning and keeping the favor of Mercury, though, of course, for me, as for all soldiers, Mithras is the most important G.o.d.

"You may be very sure that I shall, as far as may be, provide that no informer or secret-service agent can ever again succeed in gaining credence for baseless fabrications, such as those from which you have suffered. I shall endeavor to have it arranged that reports of any one agent be checked up by reports of another, the two being wholly unknown to each other. Thus no man shall, if I can prevent it, again be persecuted as you have been. I am shocked at such laxity and I shudder at the power wielded by Marcus Galvius Crispinillus, and at his misuse of it. I can find no trace of any reasonable motive; he seems to have slandered you from mere whim or the mere love of causing misery, or some spite or perhaps to increase the impression of his own importance.

"Now there looms before me the duty of seeing you restored to your rights, as to both rank and property.

"In respect to your standing as a Roman n.o.bleman there has been, is and will be no difficulty. I have had everything attended to and all necessary formalities have been gone through, all official, public records made. You are a Roman n.o.bleman in good standing with every right which your birth a.s.sured you.

"As to your property matters are not so simple. I find that you will be very wealthy, anyhow, as the heir of one-fourth of the estate of your late master, Pompeia.n.u.s Falco, and also as inheritor of his marvellous collection of gems and curios, therefore, even without anything of your confiscated property, you will be affluent.

"But that does not absolve me from the duty of seeing justice done you; of putting you in possession of your house here in Rome and of your estates in Sabinum, and in Bruttium. I find that all these were held by the _fiscus_ until after the death of Cleander. Owing to the destruction of a large part of the Palace records in the great fire I cannot make sure whether what I am told is true. I am told that your town house and country estates were granted by the _fiscus_, under proper seal, ostensibly by the command of Commodus, to the present owner. That present owner is in possession of the official transfer deeds and they are properly made out.

Yet neither from the present owner nor from the deeds can it be ascertained which Prefect of the Palace authorized the transfer. Between Cleander and Aemilius Laetus, Commodus had thirty different Prefects of the Palace, most of them for very brief terms, one for less than a full day, for he was appointed after noon one day and put to death before noon of the day following. To a certainty, I cannot ever get legal proof that the grant was gotten by bribery or was in any way illegal.

"Therefore I cannot command the present holder to return your former property to the _fiscus_, in order that the _fiscus_ may turn it over to you. Nor is there any precedent for one Prince revoking a grant made under a predecessor. Nor is there anything in our law or customs enabling me to bid the present holder to sell back to the _fiscus_ your entire former property, even at a high valuation.

"Moreover I do not feel that I ought, unless I must, take from the treasury the cash necessary to repurchase your house and estates, so as to be able to restore you to full possession of them; or to hand you a sum in cash sufficient to recompense you for the confiscation of your heritage.

"Yet, whatever straits the treasury may be in, I pledge you my word that, if you cannot recover full possession of your estates in any other way, I shall compel the present holder to release them to the _fiscus_ and shall order the _fiscus_ to restore them to you, I, out of our depleted treasury, paying the present holder, but I do not want to resort to this unless all other means fail.

"Hoping that the matter may be adjusted in another way, easier for all three of us, I have arranged to have the present holder of your former estates here in the Palace.

"When this interview between you and me terminates, I shall have you escorted to a room where you will find awaiting you the present holder of your former estates. If you two cannot come to some agreement by which, with full satisfaction to both of you, you become again possessed of your patrimony, I shall then take the measures to which I have pledged myself.

"To that end I have given orders that, if you formally make request for a second private audience with me, you shall have it, although I must leave Rome for the East within eight days and cannot despatch the imperative business awaiting me, even if I could go without food, rest or sleep. I mean what I say, you are to ask for a second audience if you really want one and if you ask for one you shall have it. But do not ask for it unless you must.

"And now, is there anything else you desire to say, or to request or any query you wish to put to me? If so, I authorize and command you to speak."

Choking, I muttered that I had nothing further to say.

"In that case," said the Emperor, standing up, "this interview is at an end. You shall be conducted to your conference with the present owner of your former estates, which I hope may turn out to your full satisfaction."

And he clapped his hands for a page.

The page conducted me through endless corridors, twisting and turning.

During that brief interval I did a great deal of very confused thinking. I was dazed and puzzled. I had realized as he ended his harangue that it would have been ridiculous to ask that man to change his mind or even modify a decision. He was not that sort of Emperor. Yet he had pledged himself to restore to me my estates or recompense me in cash. I felt that he meant it; yet I knew that he would never have uttered that pledge if he had felt that there was the remotest chance of his ever being called on to fulfill it. He was too parsimonious to promise such generosity unless absolutely certain that the occasion for it would never confront him. Yet how could he escape it and why did he feel so sure? How could any beneficiary from such a grant of confiscated property be induced to disgorge except by Imperial order and that with full compensation? Why had Severus so sedulously, yet so obviously, avoided naming the present holder of my former property? The Emperor was an austere man, stern by habit, almost grim by nature, certainly serious. He had spoken seriously. Yet I sensed a jest somewhere in the background of his thoughts. I almost believed I had caught the glint of a twinkle in his hard, gray eyes. Could I be wrong? Could I be right?

It seemed like a jest to send me to an interview with a beneficiary of a grant of confiscated property, enriched thereby, and to imply, even to suggest, that he might be induced to restore to me his acquisitions, without pressure, merely by amicable converse. I conjured up before me the probable appearance of the man I was to meet; perhaps gross and greedy like Satronius Satro, perhaps dwarfish and mean like Vedius Vedia.n.u.s, probably like anyone of the avaricious magnates, a.s.sociated with Pullanius, whom I had met while impersonating Salsonius Salinator.

I resented the possibility of an Imperial jest. I was more and more dazed and puzzled the nearer I approached the inevitable interview and the nearer I approached it the more futile and hopeless it seemed and the more despondent I grew.

The page paused at a door, opened it, waved me in and shut it.

I was in a small parlor, and there was no other man in it; I saw only one seated human figure, a woman, a lady, a graceful young woman, a charming young woman.

Then, suddenly, I saw through it all.

My troubles were indeed at an end.

I recognized Vedia!

EPILOGUE

I do not think it necessary to describe in detail my marriage to Vedia, nor our dinners at Nemestronia's, at Tanno's, at Segontius Almo's; nor the dinners we gave at my old home, after it had been fitted up to our liking, all trace of its occupancy by tenants effaced and we had settled there.

Why tell at length of my manumission of Agathemer, of my endowment of him with a goodly share of my heritage from poor Falco, or of his disposition of Falco's gems and his rapid acquisition of vast wealth and of his continued prosperity?

When my misfortunes began Nemestronia was past her eighty-fourth birthday.

After my rehabilitation Vedia and I helped at the celebration of her ninety-fifth, and of three more.

Nemestronia lived almost to her hundredth birthday, in full possession of her faculties and, until near the end, in marvellously good health. She is still remembered as having been the oldest n.o.ble matron ever known in Rome.

Like her, Chryseros Philargyrus, though long past the usual term of human life when my disasters overtook us, survived my nine winters of adventures and lived to greet me as a son rearisen from the dead, in the tenth summer after he had sped me on my way in the midnight woods from Ducconius Furfur's land.

Enough to say that Vedia and I, from a second-floor balcony, watched pa.s.s the triumphal procession of our great Prince of the Republic, Septimius Severus, when he returned victorious over both his rivals and reentered Rome, indubitably master of the world.

As to my later life I cannot forbear remarking that I am the only man with pierced ears who ever mingled as an equal with the bathers in the Baths of t.i.tus, the only man, certainly, with a brand mark on his shoulder and scourge-scars on his back who ever habitually frequented that most magnificent of our fashionable pleasure-resorts. My brand-marks and scourge-scars have not diminished my enjoyment of life except that they frequently give bores a pretext for insisting on my narrating my adventures.

Of course, as in my city mansion, so also at Villa Andivia, I have had constructed and consecrated a handsome private chapel to Mercury.

NOTES TO ANDIVIUS HEDULIO

A. THE ROMAN ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM

From the expulsion of the Kings, the people of Rome, a.s.sembled in their voting-field outside their city, each year elected the magistrates for the year: others, and especially quaestors, answering to our army-paymaster and custom-house collectors; praetors (judges, generals and governors of provinces), and two consuls, acting as chief-magistrates and generals-in- chief. A man was generally first quaestor, later praetor and finally consul, often holding other intermediary offices.

Ex-officials, who had held the more important offices of the Republic, became by immemorial custom life-members of the Senate, which was never an elective, always a selective body, without legal authority but with great influence. As the Republic's Empire spread the Senate was less and less able to control provincial governors, until such self-confident geniuses as Sulla, Caesar and Augustus became able to control it. The Roman Republic was never abolished, and did not die till the Turks captured Constantinople in 1453. It conquered a great Empire and when its Senate could no longer control the magistrates who managed that Empire, its solders who, by conquering and holding provinces to pay taxes maintained the Empire and the Republic, wearied of the incompetence of the Senate's appointees, of the squabbles and strife of their leaders, chose by acclamation one commander whom they loved and trusted. The Senate, at his mercy, legalized his sovereignty by conferring on him for life the powers of a Tribune, an official who could initiate nothing, but had the legal power to forbid anything and everything.

The Senate continued to administer those provinces reckoned safe from invasion or insurrection; always two governed by ex-consuls and about ten governed each by an ex-praetor. It continued to dispose of the funds derived from their taxes and to recruit itself from ex-magistrates and to retain much of its influence, dignity and importance.

The outer provinces and those p.r.o.ne to turbulence were governed not by ex- consuls and ex-praetors acting in the name of the Senate, but each by a deputy of the Emperor, styled propraetor, praeses, or procurator. These were called imperial provinces. The magistrates of the senatorial provinces were, under the Empire, no longer elected by the people, but appointed by the Senate, with or without an indication of the Emperor's wishes.

The Romans never devised any method of choosing a chief magistrate other than acclamation by an army and confirmation by the Senate, creating an Emperor. If two commanders at about the same time were separately saluted "Imperator," as were Septimius Severus and Pescennius Niger, there was no method of adjudicating their conflicting claims except by Civil War and the survival of one Imperator only.