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"This man," said he, "is the murderer of Numerian;" and without giving him time to enter on a dangerous justification, drew his sword, and buried it in the breast of the unfortunate præfect. A charge supported by such decisive proof was admitted without contradiction, and the legions, with repeated acclamations, acknowledged the justice and authority of the emperor Diocletian.
Here they were joined by the fugitive Mesembrius who, when he left Rome, fled directly to Numerian. No one had been able to see this noble Cæsar for several weeks. He suffered severe pain in his eyes, and did not leave his tent. Mesembrius made his complaint to the leaders next in command.
When Ulpius had arrived within a few paces of the girl he stopped, saying in a hoarse, thick voice 'Hide your toy Numerian is at the gates! Antonina started violently as she listened to those repulsive accents.
"What did you say?" he eagerly exclaimed. "Carinus has abdicated, and Numerian will be Imperator? Huzza! Huzza!" "Do you know Numerian? What kind of a man is he?" asked the courtiers anxiously. "What kind of a man? He is a hero, a Roman, under whose rule Rome's golden age will begin again and the sun of fame will again shine upon us.
Come! he continued in a louder voice, shaking Numerian by the arm. 'It is time that the servant of the temple should behold the place of the sacrifice, and sharpen the knife for the victim before sunset! Arouse thee, bondman, and follow me! As yet, Numerian had neither spoken, nor attempted to escape.
'The favour I would petition for, continued Numerian, in low, steady, bitter tones, 'is that you would remove your harlot there, to your own abode. Here are no singing-boys, no banqueting-halls, no perfumed couches. The retreat of a solitary old man is no place for such an one as she. I beseech you, remove her to a more congenial home.
Before we enter upon the memorable reign of that prince, it will be proper to punish and dismiss the unworthy brother of Numerian. Carinus possessed arms and treasures sufficient to support his legal title to the empire. But his personal vices overbalanced every advantage of birth and situation.
'The place of the sacrifice aha! the place of the sacrifice! cried the Pagan exultingly, as he drew Numerian to the entrance of the cavity, and solemnly pointed into the darkness beneath. The father gazed steadily into the chasm, never turning now to look on Antonina, never moving to renew the struggle for freedom. Earthly loves and earthly hopes began to fade away from his heart he was praying.
The power of action, suspended in Antonina as she entered their ill-chosen refuge, was now arrested in Numerian also; but with him no thought of the enemy in the street had any part, at this moment, in the resistless influence which held him helpless before the enemy in the temple. It was a feeling of deeper awe and darker horror.
The nobly symmetrical frontage of the palace itself, with its graceful succession of long porticoes and colossal statues, contrasted by the picturesquely irregular appearance of the opposite dwelling of Numerian and the lofty houses by its side; the soft, indistinct masses of foliage running parallel along the upper ends of the street, terminated and connected by the archway garden across the road, on which was planted a group of tall pine-trees, rising in gigantic relief against the transparent sky; the brilliant light streaming across the pavement from Vetranio's gaily-curtained windows, immediately opposed by the tranquil moonlight which lit the more distant view formed altogether a prospect in which the natural and the artificial were mingled together in the most exquisite proportions a prospect whose ineffable poetry and beauty might, on any other night, have charmed the most careless eye and exalted the most frivolous mind.
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