us as to
the end of the conversation.

"She is in prison against the will of Caesar and through thy error,
through thy ignorance of the law of nations," said Petronius, with
emphasis. "Thou art a naive man, Tigellinus; but even thou wilt not
assert that she burnt Rome, and if thou wert to do so, Caesar would not
believe thee."

But Nero had recovered and begun to half close his near-sighted eyes
with an expression of indescribable malice.

"Petronius is right," said he, after a while.

Tigellinus looked at him with amazement.

"Petronius is right," repeated Nero; "to-morrow the gates of the prison
will be open to her, and of the marriage feast we will speak the day
after at the amphitheatre."

"I have lost again," thought Petronius.

When he had returned home, he was so certain that the end of Lygia's
life had come that he sent a trusty freedman to the amphitheatre to
bargain with the chief of the spoliarium for the delivery of her body,
since he wished to give it to Vinicius.

Chapter LXV

Evening exhibitions, rare up to that period and given only
exceptionally, became common in Nero's time, both in the Circus and
amphitheatre. The Augustians liked them, frequently because they were
followed by feasts and drinking-bouts which lasted till daylight. Though
the people were sated already with blood-spilling, still, when the news
went forth that the end of the games was approaching, and that the
last of the Christians were to die at an evening spectacle, a countless
audience assembled in the amphitheatre. The Augustians came to a man,
for they understood that it would not be a common spectacle; they knew
that Caesar had determined to make for himself a tragedy out of the
suffering of Vinicius. Tigellinus had kept secret the kind of punishment
intended for the betrothed of the young tribune; but that merely roused
general curiosity. Those who had seen Lygia at the house of Plautius
told wonders of her beauty. Others were occupied above all with the
question, would they see her really on the arena that day; for many
of those who had heard the answer given Petronius and Nerva by Caesar
explained it in two ways: some supposed simply that Nero would give or
perhaps had given the maiden to Vinicius; they remembered that she was
a hostage, hence free to worship whatever divinities she liked, and that
the law of nations did not permit her punishment.

Uncertainty, waiting, and curiosity had mastered all spectat