"Surely the gods are against me," said Marcus, "if they have given me Domitian for a rival."
"Why so, lord? Your money is as good as his, and perhaps you will pay more."
"I will pay to my last piece, but will that free me from the rage and hate of Domitian?"
"Why need he knew that you were the rival bidder?"
"Why? Oh! in Rome everything is known--even the truth sometimes."
"Time enough to trouble when trouble comes. First let us wait and see whether this maid be Miriam."
"Aye," he answered, "let us wait--since we must."
So they waited and with anxious eyes watched the great show roll by them. They saw the cars painted with scenes of the taking of Jerusalem and the statues of the gods fashioned in ivory and gold. They saw the purple hangings of the Babylonian broidered pictures, the wild beasts, and the ships mounted upon wheels. They saw the treasures of the temple and the images of victory, and many other things, for that pageant seemed to be endless, and still the captives and the Emperors did not come.
One sight there was also that caused Marcus to shrink as though fire had burned him, for yonder, set in the midst of a company of jugglers and buffoons that gibed and mocked at them, were the two unhappy men who had been taken prisoners by the Jews. On they tramped, their hands bound behind them, clad in full armour, but wearing a woman's distaff where the sword should have been, and round their necks the placards which proclaimed their shame. The brutal Roman mob hooted them also, that mob which ever loved spectacles of cruelty and degradation, calling them cowards. One of the men, a bull-necked, black-haired fellow, suffered it patiently, remembering that at even he must be set free to vanish where he would. The other, who was blue-eyed and finer-featured, having gentle blood in his veins, seemed to be maddened by their talk, for he glared about him, gnashing his teeth like a wild beast in a cage. Opposite to the house of Marcus came the climax.
"Cur," yelled a woman in the mob, casting a pebble that struck him on the cheek. "Cur! Coward!"
The blue-eyed man stopped, and, wheeling round, shouted in answer: "I am no coward, I who have slain ten men with my own hand, five of them in single combat. You are the cowards who taunt me. I was overwhelmed, that is all, and afterwards in the prison I thought of my wife and children and lived on. Now I die and my blood be on you."