"Then let us pray the gods to make the rest of us immodest! The
decision that he makes is this: If Commodus has heard of the
conspiracy; if Commodus intends to kill him, he will then allow
somebody else to kill Commodus! He will permit me, who am a killer only
by professional mistake and not by intention, to be made to kill my
former pupil with a poisoned drink! You understand, not even then will
Pertinax take resolution by the throat and do his own work."
"So Pertinax shall drink this?"
"It is meant that Commodus shall drink it. That is, unless Commodus
emerges from his sulks too soon and butchers all of us--as we deserve!"
"Have done with riddles, Galen! How will that affect Pertinax, except
to make him emperor?"
"Nothing will make him emperor unless he makes himself," said Galen.
"You will know tonight. We lack a hero, Sextus. All conspirators
resemble rats that gnaw and run, until one rat at last discovers himself
Caesar of the herd by accident. Caius Julius Caesar was a hero. He was
one mind bold and above and aloof. He saw. He considered. He took.
His murderers were all conspirators, who ran like rats and turned on one
another. So are we! Can you imagine Caius Julius Caesar threatening an
old philosopher like me with death unless he mixed the poison for a
woman to take to his enemy's bedside? Can you imagine the great Julius
hesitating to destroy a friend or spare an enemy?"
"Do you mean, they strike tonight, and haven't warned me?"
"I have warned you."
"Marcia has been prepared these many days to kill me if I meant to
strike," said Sextus. "I can understand that; it is no more than a
woman's method to protect her bully. She accuses and defends him, fears
and loves him, hates him and hates more the man who sets her free. But
Pertinax--did he not bid you warn me?"
"No," said Galen. "Are you looking for nobility? I tell you there is
nothing noble in conspiracies. Pertinax and Marcia have used you. They
will try to use me. They will blame me. They will certainly blame you.
I advise you to run to your friends in the Aventine Hills. Thence
hasten out of Italy. If Pertinax should fail and Commodus survives this
night--"
"No, Galen. He must not fail! Rome needs Pertinax. That poison--
phaugh! Is no sword left in Rome? Has Pertinax no iron in him? Better
one of Marcia's long pins than that unmanly stuff. Where is Narcissus?"
"I don't know," said Galen. "Narcissus is another who will do well to
protect himself. Commodus is well disposed toward him. Commodus might
send for him--as he will surely send for me if belly-burning sets in.
He and I would make a good pair to be blamed for murdering an emperor."
"You run!" urged Sextus. "Go now! Go to my camp in the Aventines. You
will find Norbanus and two freedmen waiting near the Porta Capena; they
are wearing farmers' clothes and look as if they came from Sicily. They
know you. Say I bade them take you into hiding."
Galen smiled at him. "And you?" he asked.
"Narcissus shall smuggle me into the palace. It is I who will slay
Commodus, lest Pertinax should stain his hands. If they prefer to turn
on me, what matter? Pertinax, if he is to be Caesar, will do better not
to mount the throne all bloody. Let him blame me and then execute me.
Rome will reap the benefit. Marcia has the praetorian guard well under
control, what with her bribes and all the license she has begged for
them. Let Marcia proclaim that Pertinax is Caesar, the praetorian guard
will follow suit, and the senate will confirm it so soon after daybreak
that the citizens will find themselves obeying a new Caesar before they
know the old one is dead! Then let Pertinax make new laws and restore
the ancient liberties. I will die happy."
"O youth--insolence of youth!" said Galen, smiling. He resumed his
mixing of the powders, adding new ingredients. "I was young once--young
and insolent. I dared to try to tutor Commodus! But never in my long
life was I insolent enough to claim all virtue for myself and bid my
elders go and hide! You think you will slay Commodus? I doubt it."
"How so?"
Sextus was annoyed. The youth in him resented that his altruism should
be mocked.
"Pertinax should do it," Galen answered. "If Rome needed no more than
philosophy and grammar, better make me Caesar! I was mixing my
philosophy with surgery and medicine while Pertinax was sucking at his
mother's breast in a Ligurian hut. Rome, my son, is sick of too much
mixed philosophy. She needs a man of iron--a riser to occasion--a
cutter of Gordian knots, precisely as a sick man needs a surgeon. The
senate will vote, as you say, at the praetorian guard's dictation. You
have been clever, my Sextus, with your stirring of faction against
faction. They are mean men, all so full of mutual suspicion as to heave
a huge sigh when they know that Pertinax is Caesar, knowing he will
overlook their plotting and rule without bloodshed if that can be done.
But it can't be! Unless Pertinax is man enough to strike the blow that
shall restore the ancient liberties, then he is better dead before he
tries to play the savior! We have a tyrant now. Shall we exchange him
for a weak-kneed theorist?"
"Are you ready to die, Galen?"
"Why not? Are you the only Roman? I am not so old I have no virtue
left. A little wisdom comes with old age, Sextus. It is better to live
for one's country than to die for it, but since no way has been invented
of avoiding death, it is wiser to die usefully than like a sandal thrown
on to the rubbish-heap because the fashion changes."
"I wish you would speak plainly, Galen. I have told you all my secrets.
You have seen me risk my life a thousand times in the midst of Commodus'
informers, coming and going, interviewing this and that one, urging
here, restraining there, denying myself even hope of personal reward.
You know I have been whole-hearted in the cause of Pertinax. Is it
right, in a crisis, to put me off with subtleties?"
"Life is subtle. So is virtue. So is this stuff," Galen answered,
poking at the mixture with a bronze spoon. "Every man must choose his
own way in a crisis. Some one's star has fallen. Commodus'? I think
not. That star blazed out of obscurity, and Commodus is not obscure.
Mine? I am unimportant; I shall make no splendor in the heavens when
my hour comes. Marcia's? Is she obscure? Yours? You are like me, not
born to the purple; when a sparrow dies, however diligently he has
labored in the dirt, no meteors announce his fall. No, not Maternus,
the outlaw, to say nothing of Sextus, the legally dead man, can command
such notice from the sky. That meteor was some one's who shall blaze
into fame and then die."
"Dark words, Galen!"
"Dark deeds!" the old man answered. "And a path to be chosen in
darkness! Shall I poison the man whom I taught as a boy? Shall I
refuse, and be drowned in the sewer by Marcia's slaves? Shall I betray
my friends to save my own old carcass? Shall I run away and hide, at my
age, and live hounded by my own thoughts, fearful of my shadow, eating
charity from peasants? I can easily say no to all those things. What
then? It is not what a man does not, but what he does that makes him or
unmakes him. There is nothing left but subtlety, my Sextus. What will
you do? Go and do it now. Tomorrow may be too late."
Sextus shrugged his shoulders, baffled and irritated. He had always
looked to Galen for advice in a predicament. It was Galen, in fact, who
had kept him from playing much more than the part of a spy-listening,
talking, suggesting, but forever doing nothing violent.
"You know as well as I do, there is nothing ready," he retorted. "Long
ago I could have had a thousand armed men waiting for a moment such as
this to rally behind Pertinax. But I listened to you--"
"And are accordingly alive, not crucified!" said Galen. "The praetorian
guard is well able to slaughter any thousand men, to uphold Commodus or
to put Pertinax in the place of Commodus. Your thousand men would only
decorate a thousand gibbets, whether Pertinax should win or lose. If he
should win, and become Caesar, he would have to make them an example of
his love of law and order, proving his impartiality by blaming them for
what he never invited them to do. For mark this: Pertinax has never
named himself as Commodus' successor. I warn you: there is far less
safety for his friends than for his enemies, unless he, with his own
hand, strikes the blow that makes him emperor."
"If Marcia should do it--?"
"That would be the end of Marcia."
"If I should do it?"
"That would be the end of you, my Sextus."
"Let us say farewell, then, Galen! This right hand shall do it. It will
save my friends. It will provide a culprit on whom Pertinax may lay the
blame. He will ascend the throne unguilty of his predecessor's blood--"
"And you?" asked Galen.
"I will take my own life. I will gladly die when I have ridded Rome of
Commodus."
He paused, awaiting a reply, but Galen appeared almost rudely
unconcerned.
"You will not say farewell?"
"It is too soon," Galen answered, folding up his powder in a sheet of
parchment, tying it, at great pains to arrange the package neatly.
"Will you not wish me success?"
"That is something, my Sextus, that I have no powders for. I have
occasionally cured men. I can set most kinds of fractures with
considerable skill, old though I am. And I can divert a man's attention
sometimes, so that he lets nature heal him of mysterious diseases. But
success is something you have already wished for and have already made
or unmade. What you did, my Sextus, is the scaffolding of what you do
now; this, in turn, of what you will do next. I gave you my advice. I
bade you run away--in which case I would bid you farewell, but not
otherwise."
"I will not run."
"I heard you."
"And you said you are sentimental, Galen!"
"I have proved it to you. If I were not, I myself would run!"
Galen led the way out of the room into the hall where the mosaic floor
and plastered walls presented colored temple scenes--priests burning
incense at the shrine of Aesculapius, the sick and maimed arriving and
the cured departing, giving praise.
"There will be no hero left in Rome when they have slain our Roman
Hercules," said Galen. "He has been a triton in a pond of minnows. You
and I and all the other little men may not regret him afterward, since
heroes, and particularly mad ones, are not madly loved. But we will not
enjoy the rivalry of minnows."
He led Sextus to the porch and stood there for a minute holding to his
arm.
"There will be no rivals who will dare to raise their heads," said
Sextus, "once our Pertinax has made his bid for power."
"But he will not," Galen answered. "He will hesitate and let others do
the bidding. Too many scruples! He who would govern an empire might
better have fetters on feet and hands! Now go. But go not to the palace
if you hope to see a heroism--or tomorrow's dawn!"