activity, of pomp
and splendour. Marble courts and columned porticos stretched on in
almost endless vistas, covering many acres of ground. Flashing fountains
leaping sunward sparkled in the beams of noonday, diffusing a coolness
through the air, which was fragrant with blossoms of the orange and
magnolia trees growing in the open courts. Snowy statuary gleamed amid
the vivid foliage, and beneath the shadow of the frescoed corridors.

Having dismounted at the outer court and given their horses to
obsequious grooms, Sertorius and the Greek repaired each to a marble
bath to remove the stains of travel before entering the presence of the
Emperor. Having made their toilet they advanced to the inner court. The
guards who stood in burnished mail at the portal of the palace
respectfully made way for the well-known imperial officer, but were
about to obstruct the passage of the Greek secretary, when with a
gesture of authority Sertorius bade the soldier to permit the man to
pass.

"Quite right, Max, as a rule: but wrong this time. He accompanies me on
business of state, before the Emperor."

Two lictors in white tunics with scarlet hem, and bearing each the
fasces or bundle of rods bound with filets from the top of which
projected a polished silver axe, came forward and conducted the
centurion into the Imperial presence chamber, the secretary remaining in
an ante-room.

The lictors draw aside a heavy gold-embroidered curtain, and Sertorius
stood in the presence of the Lord of the World, the man to whom divine
honours had been ascribed, who held in his hand the lives of all his
myriads of subjects, and the word of whose mouth uttering his despotic
will might consign even the loftiest, without form or process of law, to
degradation or death.

Let us note for a moment what manner of man this god on earth, this
Diocletian, whose name is remembered with abhorrence and execration, the
degenerate usurper of the august name of the C[ae]sars, may be. He sits in
an ivory, purple-cushioned chair, near a table of inlaid precious woods.
His short and obese figure is enswathed in the folds of an ample
crimson-bordered toga, or fine linen vestment of flowing folds. His
broad, coarse features are of plebeian cast, for he had been originally
a Dalmatian slave, or at least the son of a slave; but the
long-continued exercise of despotic authority had given an imperious
haughtiness to his bearing. He was now in his fifty-eighth year, but his