ospital adjoining. There, too, they
had given no quarter; and among the sufferers who had been carried
thither to be healed they had found Tarautas, the wounded gladiator. A
Numidian, the youngest of the legion, a beardless youth, had pinned the
terrible conqueror of lions and men to the bed with his spear, and
then, with the same weapon, had released at least a dozen of his
fellow-sufferers from their pain.

As he told his story the Egyptian stood staring into vacancy, as though
he saw it all, and the whites of his eyeballs gleamed more hideously
than ever out of his swarthy face. The lean, sallow wretch stood
before Caesar like a talking corpse, and did not observe the effect his
narrative of the gladiator's death was producing. But he soon found out.
While he was yet speaking, Caracalla, leaning on the table by his couch
with both hands, fixed his eyes on his face, without a word.

Then he suddenly sprang up, and, beside himself with rage, he
interrupted the terrified Egyptian and railed at him furiously:

"My Tarautas, who had so narrowly escaped death! The bravest hero of his
kind basely murdered on his sick-bed, by a barbarian, a beardless boy!
And you, you loathsome jackal, could allow it? This deed--and you know
it, villain--will be set down to my score. It will be brought up against
me to the end of my days in Rome, in the provinces, everywhere. I shall
be cursed for your crime wherever there is a human heart to throb and
feel, and a human tongue to speak. And I--when did I ever order you to
slake your thirst for blood in that of the sick and suffering? Never! I
could never have done such a thing! I even told you to spare the women
and helpless slaves. You are all witnesses, But you all hear me--I will
punish the murderer of the wretched sick! I will avenge you, foully
murdered, brave, noble Tarautas!--Here, lictors! Bind him--away with him
to the Circus with the criminals thrown to the wild beasts! He allowed
the girl whose life I bade him spare to be burned to death before his
eyes, and the hapless sick were slain at his command by a beardless
boy!--And Tarautas! I valued him as I do all who are superior to their
kind; I cared for him. He was wounded for our entertainment, my friends.
Poor fellow--poor, brave Tarautas!"

He here broke into loud sobs, and it was so unheard-of, so
incomprehensible a thing that this man should weep who, even at his
father's death had not shed a tear, that Julius Paulinus hims