e to quell it. He
was requested to keep quiet. It occurred to him that his father ought
to be ashamed of himself to reign so long. He was requested to vacate
his apartment. There were dumb plots in dark cellars, of which only the
echo of a whisper has descended to us, but which at the time were quite
loud enough to reach Vespasian's ears. Titus interceded. Domitian was
requested to behave.

For a while he prowled in the moonlight. He had been too precipitate,
he decided, and to allay suspicion presently he went about in society,
mingling his hours with those of married women. Manifestly his ways had
mended. But Vespasian was uneasy. A comet had appeared. The doors of
the imperial mausoleum had opened of themselves, besides, he was not
well. The robust and hardy soldier, suddenly without tangible cause,
felt his strength give way. "It is nothing," his physician said; "a
slight attack of fever." Vespasian shook his head; he knew things of
which the physician was ignorant. "It is death," he answered, "and an
emperor should meet it standing."

Titus' turn came next. A violent, headstrong, handsome, rapacious
prince, terribly prodigal, thoroughly Oriental, surrounded by dancers
and mignons, living in state with a queen for mistress, startling even
Rome with the uproar of his debauches--no sooner was Vespasian gone
than presto! the queen went home, the dancers disappeared, the
debauches ceased, and a ruler appeared who declared he had lost a day
that a good action had not marked; a ruler who could announce that no
one should leave his presence depressed.

Though Vespasian had gone, his reign continued. Not long, it is true,
and punctuated by a spectacle of which Caligula, for all his poetry,
had not dreamed--the burial of Pompeii. But a reign which, while it
lasted, was fastidious and refined, and during which, again and again,
Titus, who commanded death and whom death obeyed, besought Domitian to
be to him a brother.

Domitian had no such intention. He had a party behind him, one made up
of old Neronians, the army of the discontented, who wanted a change,
and greatly admired this charming young prince whose hours were passed
in killing flies and making love to married women. The pretorians too
had been seduced. Domitian could make captivating promises when he
chose.

As a consequence Titus, like Vespasian, was uneasy, and with cause.
Dion Cassius, or rather that brute Xiphilin, his abbreviator, mentions
the fever that