ell as in title Tribune and Prince of the
Republic, Emperor of its armies, Augustus and Caesar. Your solicitude I
applaud, but I feel better able to take care of myself than can any other
man save myself. I fear no man and appoint no man I distrust. I distrust
few men after appointment. You lodge a grave charge against a man I have
trusted, appointed and then trusted. I condemn few men unheard. As your
Imperator I command you to camp where my legates indicate, to eat a hearty
noon meal, to sleep, or at least rest in your tents, two full hours. About
the tenth hour of the day I shall return, my trusty guards about me and
Perennis himself in my retinue. From the platform of your camp, as a chief
commander should, I will harangue you, and from that platform, after he
has heard from me your accusation, my Prefect of the Praetorium shall make
to you his defense. After he has spoken you shall hear me deliver just and
impartial judgment, a judgment no man of you can but accept as fair and
righteous.

"And now farewell, until the tenth hour."

At which word he had reined up, wheeled and spurred his mettlesome mount
and thereupon vanished with his staff in a cloud of dust, at full gallop.

According to the Emperor's behest we rested in our tents after the
centurions had each harangued his men. But if any slept, it was a marvel.
All were too excited to sleep and every tent, as far as I could learn,
talked without cessation. By the tenth hour, when the sun was visibly
declining and the warmth of the midday abating, we were all assembled in
the camp-square, the men helmeted and with their swords at their sides,
but without shields or spears.

It was perfectly in keeping with the inconsistency of the mutineers that
the crowd of men in the camp-square, instead of being marshalled by
centuries under their sergeants, was allowed to assemble mob-fashion as
each man came and pushed. Thus Agathemer and I, who should have been
preparing to cook our company's evening meal, were not only in the throng,
but well forward among the men and, in fact, pressed legs and chests
against the legs and backs of two veterans not far from the rearmost
centurions of the gathering of sergeants, not sixty feet from the
platform, and nearly opposite its middle, though a little to the left. Few
veteran privates heard and saw better than we.

When the Imperial cortege arrived and the platform began to fill, we two,
like the men around us and like, I feel su