. Then, suddenly changing his mood,
he affected the slow progress and military pomp of an Oriental king.

On reaching the borders of Germany the emperor found no foes and showed
no fancy for fighting. Concealing some boys in a wood, he got up a mock
battle with them, and at its end congratulated the troops on their valor
and felicitated himself on his success. Next, the British island being
still under process of conquest, he marched his army, two hundred
thousand strong, to the sea-shore of Gaul, and drew them up in line of
battle. The legionaries stolidly obeyed, wondering in their stern souls
what new madness the emperor had in mind.

They were soon to know. He bade them to fill their helmets with
sea-shells, "the spoils of the ocean due to the Capitol and the palace."
Then he distributed large sums of money among the troops, giving a
reward for valor to each, and bidding them "henceforth to be happy and
rich."

This was all well for the army, but the people of Rome must be impressed
with the glory and victorious success of their emperor. Such a career
was worthy a triumph; and to the German hostages and criminals, destined
to figure in the procession to the Capitol, he added a number of tall
and martial Gauls, chosen without regard to rank or condition, whom he
ordered to learn German, that they might pass for German captives.

And now, his military expedition having ended without shedding the blood
of a foe, Caligula's insane thirst for blood arose, and he determined to
glut it out of the ranks of his own army. There were in it some
regiments which had mutinied against his father on the death of
Augustus. He ordered these to be slaughtered for their crime. Some of
his higher officers representing to him the danger of such a proceeding,
he changed his mind, and gave orders that these legions should be
decimated. But the whole army showed such symptoms of discontent with
this cruel order that Caligula was seized with consternation, and fled
in a panic to Rome.

On reaching the city the senate proved bold enough to vote him an
ovation instead of the triumph on which he had set his mind. Incensed at
this, he met the advances of the patricians with stinging insults, and
perhaps determined in his mind to be deeply revenged for this
premeditated slight.

Whatever he had in view, he did not live much longer to afflict mankind.
Four months more brought him to the end of his flagitious career. There
was a brave soldie