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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
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