the fight. Caesar bit his lip in powerless fury, and his hatred of the
towns-people, who had thus so plainly given him to understand their
sentiments, was rising from one minute to the next. He felt it a real
misfortune that he was unable to punish on the spot the insult thus
offered him; swelling with rage, he remembered a speech made by
Caligula, and wished the town had but one head, that he might sever it
from the body. The blood throbbed so fiercely in his temples, and there
was such a singing in his ears, that for some little time he neither saw
nor heard what was going on. This terrible agitation might cost him yet
some hours of great suffering. But he need no longer dread them so much;
for there sat the living remedy which he believed he had secured by the
strongest possible ties.

How fair she was! And, as he looked round once more at Melissa, he
observed that her eye was turned on him with evident anxiety. At this a
light seemed to dawn in his clouded soul, and he was once more conscious
of the love which had blossomed in his heart. But it would never do
to make her who had wrought the miracle so soon the confidante of his
hatred. He had seen her angry, had seen her weep, and had seen her
smile; and within the next few days, which were to make him a happy
man instead of a tortured victim, he longed only to see her great eyes
sparkle and her lips overflow with words of love, joy, and gratitude.
His score with the Alexandrians must be settled later, and it was in his
power to make them atone with their blood and bitterly rue the deeds of
this night.

He passed his hand over his furrowed brow, as though to wake himself
from a bad dream; nay, he even found a smile when next his eyes met
hers; and those spectators to whom his aspect seemed more absorbing than
the horrible slaughter in the arena, looked at each other in amazement,
for the indifference or the dissimulation, whichever it might be, with
which Caesar regarded this unequaled scene of bloodshed, seemed to them
quite incredible.

Never, since his very first visit to a circus, had Caracalla left
unnoticed for so long a time the progress of such a battle as this.
However, nothing very remarkable had so far occurred, for the actual
seizure of the camp had but just begun with the massacre of the Alemanni
and the suicide of the women.

At this moment the gladiator Tarautas, as nimble as a cat and as
bloodthirsty as a hungry wolf, sprang on to one of the enem