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After Agathemer and I were alone in the dark on our cots we whispered to each other a long time. "Do you really believe," I said, "that Commodus is so insane about horse- racing as to be willing to put Furfur on his throne in his robes so that he can degrade himself under the name of Palus?" "I do," said Agathemer. "No other conjecture fits what we saw.
We groped our way down the dizzying turns of the steep stair, Agathemer going first and, at the bottom, whacking his knee-cap on the lower door. This he unlocked and I found myself in a dim-lit cellar which I had visited but twice before. Agathemer locked the stair-door behind us.
In such a world, who can consider himself safe?" Agathemer looked piqued. "I reckoned," he said, "that you would feel, if not safe, at least less unsafe upon hearing my announcement." "I do," said I, "for, under any other Prince, I should be less in danger, and, when we learn who is chosen Emperor, it may turn out that I have some chance of rehabilitation."
And later, when I spoke of being found with Agathemer after the massacre, separated from him and led off to the ergastulum at Nuceria he remarked: "I can't conceive how my brother missed you. Nor could he. He looked for you among the corpses and went over the survivors twice in search of you." "I did not see him after the massacre," I declared. "Mercury protected you," was his comment.
"Ah, my dear," Agathemer replied, "we not only have had a long ride but we may have to set out on a longer tomorrow, and you know the proverb: "'Light lovers are seldom long lopers." "If you were too much disinclined to being light lovers," the girl retorted, "you'd never be strolling down this street. Come in!" "My dear," said Agathemer, "we'd love to come in.
And content we had to be, no arguments, no entreaties, nothing would move him. "I'll be fair with you," he said. "The lads I took you for had paid me all I had asked them except one gold piece each on landing at Genoa. That's all you'll have to pay me." Nothing would budge him from his resolution. Agathemer in despair drowned his misery in flageolet playing.
Agathemer was squatted by my head, his back against that edge of the niche; by my feet, leaning against the opposite edge of the niche, facing Agathemer, and therefore where I could best see and hear him sat Chryseros.
Hylactor was for following us: we had to order him back, for he paid more attention to us than to Nona. With a last backward glance at the edge of the clearing we plunged into the forest by the track leading northward. We had not gone a hundred paces when I thought I heard a scream and stopped. Agathemer declared he had heard nothing.
Agathemer broke off two fragments of the bread and we munched ruminatively. We had hardly swallowed three mouthfuls when Agathemer exclaimed: "Just in time! I can hear the arrows already! Listen!" We listened. I could hear a sound as of hail on roofs. And, just above us, I could hear the arrows plunge into our protecting mound with a swishing, rending thud.
Sheep's-kidneys and sheep's-liver are better eating than goat's-kidneys and goat's-liver. We both agreed on that and we liked mutton chops and mutton cutlets. Hylactor got only the offal and the coarser bits, the rest Agathemer made into a relishable broth flavored with marjoram, bay-leaves and other herbs.
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