d completely. I would have been willing to
wager that, within a month of my disappearance, some corpse somewhere was
identified as mine and my suicide reported as verified; which report had
probably been accepted at the Palace; whereafter I would be off the minds
of all secret-service men everywhere. Therefore I felt reasonably sure
that no agent would be on the lookout for me. Of course there was a chance
that one might recognize me by accident. But this was so unlikely that we
did not worry over it much.

I was more concerned for fear of arousing suspicion in Colgius by not
behaving as he would expect a Gallic Provincial to behave at his first
sight of the great games in the Circus Maximus. I could not be sure at
what he would expect me to exclaim, what I ought to wonder at and remark
on to seem natural in my assumed role of Marseilles scapegrace.

We were a party of eight, Colgius, his wife Posilla, and two teamsters or
drovers named Ramnius and Uttius, who conveyed goods or convoyed cattle
between Ostia and the markets of Rome. They had their wives with them, but
I forget their names. The three women were arrayed in wonderful costumes
of cheap fabrics dyed in gaudy hues and adorned with jewelry of gilt or
silvered bronze set with bits of colored glass. I had seen such at a
distance, but never so close.

Both Agathemer and I liked Ramnius and Uttius; we felt at ease with them
at first sight. And they were evidently intimates of Colgius and high in
his favor. He and they wore their togas with all the awkwardness to be
expected from men who donned togas only for Circus games and Amphitheatre
shows. To my amazement I found myself really delighted at again wearing a
toga. Like all gentlemen I had always loathed the hot, heavy things. But I
found myself positively thrill at being again garbed as befits a Roman on
a holiday or at a ceremonial. Besides I found that a toga, over a poor
man's tunic, was not nearly so uncomfortable as it was over the more
complicated garb of a fashionable person of means and position.

The interior of the Circus, from my novel location, appeared sufficiently
strange to lull my dread that I might seem too familiar with it. Of course
we were very far back, only five rows in front of the arcade, whereas as
long as I was a nobleman of Rome in good standing, I had always sat in the
second tier, far forward.

But what made much more difference than sitting far back and high up
instead of well fo