e he had thought out,
far back in that head of his, long before Pertinax was murdered, perhaps
even long before Commodus died, every measure he would initiate if he
became Emperor, down to the smallest detail. He had all his plans framed
and thought out, I'll wager!

"His emissaries were no fools! They, first among those despatched against
me, knew their business. I was trapped near Sentinum, on the Kalends of
this month. Never mind how; even in this plight I'm ashamed of it. They
just missed nabbing Felix Bulla along with me. But he got away that time.
And I prophesy that now he is warned of his danger and knows the
cleverness of the men on his trail, he'll show himself yet cleverer. He is
a marvel, is Felix Bulla, and promises to outdo even my record."

He broke off, breathing audibly.

"By the way," he went on, "are you hungry? I have part of a loaf of bread
in here, not yet stale and no damper than it must get in this foul air. It
hasn't fallen on the floor. It's eatable."

"I'll be hungry enough before long," I replied, "but I am not hungry now.
I had eaten all I wanted and of the best just before I was haled here."

"Speak when you want any," he said. "It will be share and share alike here
for us till they come to finish us.

"And now, tell me about yourself. I have always been curious about you. I
heard all about you when you first got into trouble and I was told that
the official report of your death was fictitious, invented by underlings
too clumsy to capture you and fearful of the consequences of their
incompetence. Also I heard unimpeachable testimony that you were alive
later and had been seen in Rome with Maternus and outside Rome, the next
summer, with the mutineers from Britain. I have often wondered how you got
into such company. Tell me how you came to be with Maternus."

I saw no utility in any further dissimulation of anything or in any
reticence; I began with our springtime stay at the farm in the mountains,
and told my story in detail, from that hour.

When I came to my visit, along with Maternus, to the Temple of Mercury and
mentioned how Maternus had warned me that we were being watched, and how I
had shot one glance towards the watchers and had recognized one of them,
he interrupted me and, without enquiring where I had seen him before,
asked for a description of the watcher I had recognized. I gave it as well
as I could and he said:

"That was my brother, Marcus Galvius Crispinillus, no