"Strike him! Knock him down!"
The crowd became tumultuous. Stones were thrown; the sham beggars of
Agamemnon's company encircled him with drawn swords. At the first
stroke the luckless leather-dresser was killed, and fell in a pool of
blood. The red-headed boy was trampled under foot, and all faces were
becoming ferocious, when at this juncture ten enormous Paphlagonian
slaves bearing on their shoulders a purple litter impatiently thrust
their way through the crowd.
"Saved!" cried the fair-haired young man, and vaulted into the litter
with one of his fellows.
The Paphlagonians hoisted the pair on their shoulders and set off at
sharp run. The infuriated crowd were making as if to dash in pursuit,
with intent to stone them, when somebody called out--
"Citizens, don't you see that it is Cæsar himself--Gallus Cæsar!"
The mob halted, paralysed by fear, and the purple litter, swaying on
the shoulders of the slaves like a skiff in a heavy sea, vanished into
the darkness up the street.
* * * * *
Six years had elapsed since the incarceration of Julian and of Gallus
in the Cappadocian fortress of Macellum. Constantius had restored them
to favour. Julian, then twenty years old, was sent to Constantinople,
and given leave to travel in Asia Minor. Gallus, the Emperor had named
to be his co-regent, with the title of Cæsar. Nevertheless this
unlooked-for favour was no valid earnest of good-will. Constantius
loved to destroy his enemies after having lulled away mistrust by a
display of exuberant affection.
"Well, Glycon, Constantia may beg me as much as she likes, in future,
to go out in false hair! But it's all over for me! I've done with it!"
"We warned your Majesty that it was dangerous."
But Cæsar, stretched on the soft cushions of the litter, had already
forgotten his alarm, and cried, laughing--
"Glycon! Glycon! _did_ you see the old woman rolling on the ground
with my beard?"