rved Heaven's justice, and you served only your own lust for
power and, through it, _me_! Your passion--stimulated by Satan, not
God--gave you the impulse, the swift strength of arm, to which Hoamer
instantly succumbed. It was a devil's judgment, a victory of hell, not
a decree of God. Now I became your chancellor; that is, your destroyer.
I quarrelled openly with the Emperor; I negotiated secretly with the
Empress. I sent your fleet to Sardinia, after learning the day before
that Belisarius had set sail with his army. After the battle of
Decimum, I advised you to shut yourself with your troops in Carthage.
The game would then have been over six months earlier, but this one
move failed,--you would not accept my counsel. I was obliged to guard
against Hilderic's vindicating himself, so I took out of the chest
before I let Hilderic search it, the warning letter, which I had
dictated. But I could permit no scion of Genseric's race to live:
Justinian would have received your two captives with honors after the
victory of Belisarius! I had them killed by my freedman and secured his
escape. But you--I had long reserved it for the hour of your greatest
supremacy, in case of the most extreme peril of our plans--you I
crushed at the right moment by the revelation that you had dethroned
Hilderic without cause and then murdered him. But my mother's curse and
my oath would not be fulfilled until you walked in chains as
Justinian's captive.

"Therefore, to prevent your escape, I shared all the suffering, all the
privations, of these last three months. Letters from King Theudis,
directly after the battle of Decimum, had offered you rescue through
the coast tribes by the galleys of the Visigoths. You never saw those
letters; I suppressed them. Not until deliverance really beckoned, when
you already stretched your hand toward it, did I strip off the mask to
destroy you utterly. Now I shall see you kiss Justinian's feet in the
hippodrome at Constantinople; this is the final consummation of my
mother's curse, my oath, and my people's vengeance."

He ceased, his face glowing, his eyes flashing down at the prisoner.

Gelimer stooped and kissed the shoe in Verus's stirrup.

"I thank you. So you are God's rod which struck and felled me. I thank
God and you for every blow, as I thanked God and you when I believed
you to be my guardian spirit. And if, meanwhile, you have committed any
sin against me, against my people,--I know not how to exp