een encamped before these walls, and
have accomplished nothing. We shoot them as easily as boys shoot crows
from behind a hedge, and can laugh at them and all their efforts. But
who has accomplished all this? Not, as would be right, you, the
Emperor's commander-in-chief, not the Emperor's army, but this icy
Roman, who can only laugh when he scoffs. He sits up there in the
Capitol and mocks at the Emperor, the Goths and us, and most of all,
give me leave to say, at you. How does this Ulysses and Ajax in one
person know so exactly all the plans of the Goths? By means of his
demons, say some. Through his Egeria, say others. And some maintain
that he has a raven which can speak and understand like a human being,
and that he sends it every night into the Gothic camp. Old women and
Romans may believe such things, but not the son of my mother! I think I
know both the raven and the demons. It is certain that the Prefect can
only learn what he knows in the Gothic camp; let us see if we cannot
use that source as well as he."

"I thought of this long since, but I saw no possibility of carrying out
my idea."

"My Huns have watched all the Prefect's movements. It is cursedly
difficult, for his brown Moor follows him like his shadow. But
sometimes Syphax is absent for days together, and then it is easier: so
I have found out that Cethegus often leaves the city at night,
sometimes by the Gate of Portuensis, sometimes by the Gate of St. Paul.
He commands the guard of both these gates. Farther my spies dared not
follow him. But to-night--for to-night the time has come again--I have
a mind to stick to his heels. But I must wait for him _outside_ the
gate, for his Isaurians would never let me pass. I shall make a round
of the walls, and remain behind in one of the trenches."

"'Tis well. But, as you say, there are two gates to be watched."

"Yes; and so I have engaged Perseus, my brother, to be my fellow-spy.
He will watch the Gate of St. Paul, I the Portuensian Gate. You may
depend upon it, that before sunrise to-morrow one or other of us will
know who is the Prefect's Egeria."

Exactly opposite the Gate of St. Paul, at about three arrow-shots,
distance from the outermost trench of the city, lay a large and ancient
building, the Basilica Sancti Pauli extra muros, or St. Paul's outside
the walls, which only completely disappeared at the time of the siege
of Rome by the Connetable of Bourbon.

Originally a temple dedicated to Jupite