stus' and they were explained to
me, I was doubly incensed against you. That no beast would touch you, even
when bound and your face covered, convinced me of your complete innocence.

"Thereupon, after I had ordered you released, I had turned my attention
again to the spectacle of the games in the arena, promising myself an
interview with you later, for I was intensely curious about you. But, that
very day, before dark, Flavius Clemens craved a brief private audience
with me and informed me that he had recognized you as Andivius Hedulio and
that you had confessed your identity. I ordered you at once into the
Tullianum, pending my decision as to how to wring from you a complete
disclosure of your villainies and accomplices before putting you to death.

"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 interes