which the proconsul's jest at his expense had
been received, than Zminis began to give his report of the great massacre
in the Museum. He could boast of having spared scarcely one of the empty
word-pickers with whom the epigrams against Caesar and his mother had
originated. Teachers and pupils, even the domestic officials, had been
overtaken by the insulted sovereign's vengeance. Nothing was left but the
stones of that great institution, which had indeed long outlived its
fame. The Numidians who had helped in the work had been drunk with blood,
and had forced their way even into the physician's lecture-rooms and the
hospital adjoining. There, too, they had given no quarter; and among the
sufferers who had been carried thither to be healed they had found
Tarautas, the wounded gladiator. A Numidian, the youngest of the legion,
a beardless youth, had pinned the terrible conqueror of lions and men to
the bed with his spear, and then, with the same weapon, had released at
least a dozen of his fellow-sufferers from their pain.

As he told his story the Egyptian stood staring into vacancy, as though
he saw it all, and the whites of his eyeballs gleamed more hideously than
ever out of his swarthy face. The lean, sallow wretch stood before Caesar
like a talking corpse, and did not observe the effect his narrative of
the gladiator's death was producing. But he soon found out. While he was
yet speaking, Caracalla, leaning on the table by his couch with both
hands, fixed his eyes on his face, without a word.

Then he suddenly sprang up, and, beside himself with rage, he interrupted
the terrified Egyptian and railed at him furiously:

"My Tarautas, who had so narrowly escaped death! The bravest hero of his
kind basely murdered on his sick-bed, by a barbarian, a beardless boy!
And you, you loathsome jackal, could allow it? This deed--and you know
it, villain--will be set down to my score. It will be brought up against
me to the end of my days in Rome, in the provinces, everywhere. I shall
be cursed for your crime wherever there is a human heart to throb and
feel, and a human tongue to speak. And I--when did I ever order you to
slake your thirst for blood in that of the sick and suffering? Never! I
could never have done such a thing! I even told you to spare the women
and helpless slaves. You are all witnesses, But you all hear me--I will
punish the murderer of the wretched sick! I will avenge you, foully
murdered, brave, noble Tara