uccess and survival.

Then they all had a long altercation on the last day of the year, during
which Commodus cursed Marcia and Eclectus and Laetus and vowed he would
have them all executed if they mentioned the subject again. He imperiously
bade them acquiesce and so silenced them.

Then he made Furfur, who pretended to him that he was delighted, remain to
drink with him. They drank till both were dead drunk and snoring.

Marcia, finding them so, held a consultation with Eclectus and Laetus and
proposed to have Narcissus strangle Furfur, saying that with Furfur out of
the way Commodus might come to his senses: she would risk his wrath and be
resigned to death if she failed to placate him; for, with Furfur dead, he
could not carry out his crazy intentions. She said she loved Commodus so
much that she was willing to save him even at the cost of her own life.

Eclectus and Laetus acclaimed her plan and were overjoyed at their
opportunity, for all three hated Furfur. Yet, all three shrank from going
into the room with Narcissus. He, entering alone, mistook the two
sleepers, who had changed clothes, and by mistake for Furfur, strangled
Commodus. After his victim was indubitably dead and past any possibility
of reviving he summoned his accomplices and, when Marcia shrieked and
fainted, for the first time realized his blunder.

Then, frantic, he seized Furfur and strangled him to death long before
Eclectus had revived Marcia from her swoon.

As Agathemer told it to me all this came out in a haphazard tangle of
unfinished sentences, interruptions, fresh starts, questions, answers,
repetitions and explanations.

Meanwhile the day had dawned gray and lowering. Of all my strange
experiences none were more eery than that talk with Agathemer, beginning
in the dark and, with his form and features and expressions effaced,
gradually becoming more and more visible. And towards the end of his
disclosures he checked himself in the middle of a word and, raising his
hand, whispered:

"Hark!"

Silent and tense, we listened. Even in my bedroom, opening on the side
gallery of the peristyle, we heard, from over the roofs, cries of:

"The tyrant is dead! The despot is dead! The prize-fighter is dead! The
murderer is dead!"

"The news is out!" Agathemer ejaculated, and he breathed a prayer to
Mercury, in which I joined. When finally he had told all he had to tell I
marvelled:

"Can it be possible that the most intimate and secret c