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"Hasten hence," she said, throwing her ample himation around her sister's shoulders, and fastening the golden balteus about her hips. "You can follow my slave safely. No one will notice the exchange, especially amid the noisy tumult of the circus." "No, I cannot accept this sacrifice," cried Sophronia, struggling with her own heart. "God forbids it." "Your God is the God of Love," said Glyceria.
But these few seconds had sufficed for Glyceria to light a vessel filled with some inflammable fluid and, at the instant Carinus succeeded in forcing the curtains apart, she poured the flaming contents over her couch and, while the blaze caught the light draperies, she herself sprang with a single bound upon the bed, now burning around her, whence like a terrible, destroying vision she shouted to the terror-stricken Augustus: "Now, come!"
Of course, Mesembrius was not only blind, but deaf, when Glyceria was mentioned in his presence; he himself never permitted her name to cross his lips. His second daughter was Sophronia, who was always by the old man's side at his country estate.
A tribune bent forward to kiss the maniac's hand, and ask in a timid voice: "What result dost thou predict for the battle to which Carinus is just marching?" Glyceria heard the question, and looked gloomily at the soldiers. "Fear nothing! Destroy, set brother against brother, whoever may conquer Rome has lost.
Yet Sophronia did kiss her, and at the same instant Ævius entered with the guards who accompanied him. "We are betrayed!" shrieked Glyceria, placing herself before her sister to protect her. Then, with savage fury, she cried: "Who sent you to this place, miserable sycophant? You have made a mistake; this is a prison, not a bacchanalian revel."
Glyceria whispered impetuously to her pale-faced sister: "Now a greater horror than death awaits you. But be strong. Under the balteus which I fastened around you is a sharp dagger. You are a Roman; I need say no more." She pressed Sophronia's hand as she spoke, and without vouchsafing Ævius another glance, hastened through the ranks of the soldiers, who swiftly made way for her.
I am the terrible Glyceria who sends down a rain of fire upon you when you are in camp, who makes the rivers overflow their banks before you, and in the midst of summer brings winter upon your bands so that you are swept away like flies? Do you no longer remember Trivius, whom in my wrath I transformed into a stag, and did not restore his human form until the hounds had torn him?
Glyceria, in blissful delusion, yielded to his embrace, and in her happiness had almost silenced the warning voice in her heart, when Carinus' cheek suddenly touched hers, and she discovered that his face was beardless. The most terrible thought darted through Glyceria's brain. "Ha! Who are you? You are not Manlius. Be accursed! You are Carinus."
He tugs downwards and backwards, but too late; the drop-fly is fast wrapt in Ceratophyllum and Glyceria, Callitriche and Potamogeton, and half-a-dozen more horrid things with long names and longer stems; and what remains but the fate of Campbell's Lord Ullin? 'The waters wild went o'er his child, And he was left lamenting.
If you are asked who rescued you, say that it was a stranger. I wish to cause no one sorrow. Never mention my name." The weeping girl embraced her sister, from whom she could not bear to part. Glyceria herself urged her away: "Go, hasten. Do not kiss me; it is not well to kiss me. Destruction is on my lips."