"Only slightly. The Longobardians pretended, when they saw me swimming
in the water, to take me for a dolphin, and shot their arrows at me."

"Nurse yourself--a solidus for every drop of your blood!--the letter is
worth blood and gold, as it seems. Nurse yourself! and bid the
Isaurians let no one enter."

And now, alone in his tent, the Prefect began to read.

His features grew darker and darker. Ever deeper became the wrinkle in
the centre of his mighty forehead; ever more harshly and firmly
compressed his lips.

"To Cornelius Cethegus Caesarius, the Ex-prefect and ex-friend,
Procopius of Caesarea, for the last time. This is the most sorrowful
business for which I have ever used either my former or my present
pen-hand. And I would gladly give this my left hand, as I gave my right
for Belisarius, if I need not write this letter. The revocation and
renunciation of our friendship of thirty years! In this unheroic time I
believed in two heroes; the hero of the sword, Belisarius; and the hero
of the intellect, Cethegus. In future I must hate, and almost despise,
the latter."

The reader threw the letter on the couch upon which he lay. Then he
took it up again with a frown and read on:

"Nothing more was wanting but that Belisarius should prove to be the
traitor that you would have represented him to be. But his innocence is
as clearly proved as your black falsehood. I had often felt uneasy at
the crookedness of your ways, into which you had partly led me also;
but I believed in the grandeur and unselfishness of your design: the
liberation of Italy! Now, however, I see that the mainspring of your
actions was measureless, unlimited, merciless ambition! A design which
necessitates such means as you have used is desecrated in my eyes for
ever. You tried to ruin Belisarius, that brave and simple-minded man,
by means of his own repentant wife, and to sacrifice him to Theodora
and to your own ambition. That was devilish; and I turn away from you
for ever."

Cethegus closed his eyes.

"I ought not to wonder at it," he said to himself. "He too has his
idol: Belisarius! Whoever touches that idol is as hateful to the wise
Procopius as he who sees in the Cross merely a piece of wood is to the
Christian. Therefore I ought not to wonder at it--but it pains me! Such
is the power of a thirty years' habit. During all those years a warmer
feeling came over my heart at the sound of the name, Procopius! How
weak does custom make