With this he drew the _cucullus_ (hood) of his mantle over his head and departed. His host looked after him. "A very important tool!" he said to himself. "It is a good thing that he is only a tool. May he always remain so!" Cethegus walked away from the Via Appia in a north-westerly direction, towards the Capitol, beneath which, at the northern end of the Via Sacra, his house was situated, to the north-east of the Forum Romanum. The cool morning air played refreshingly over his brow. He threw open his mantle and deeply inflated his strong broad chest. "Yes, I am a riddle," he said to himself. "I join in a conspiracy and go about by night, like a republican or a lover at twenty. And wherefore? Who knows why he breathes? Because he must. And so I do what I must. But one thing is certain, this priest may--perhaps must--become Pope; but he must not remain so long, else farewell my scarcely-avowed thoughts, which are yet but dreams and cloud-mists. Perhaps it may be that from them will arise a storm that will decide my fate. See, it lightens in the east! 'Tis well; I accept the omen!" With these words he entered his house. In his bed-chamber he found a letter on the cedar table before his bed, tied with a silken string, and sealed with the royal seal. He cut the string with his dagger, opened the double waxen tablets, and read: "To Cethegus Cæsarius, the Princeps Senatus, Marcus Aurelius Cassiodorus, Senator. "Our lord and king lies on his death-bed. His daughter and heiress, Amalaswintha, wishes to speak with you before his end. "You are to undertake the most important office in the kingdom. "Hasten at once to Ravenna." CHAPTER V. Over the King's palace at Ravenna, with all its gloomy splendour and inhospitable spaciousness, lay an air of breathless anxiety. The old castle of the Cæsars had suffered many disfiguring changes in the course of centuries, and since the Gothic kings, with all their Germanic courtiers, had taken the place of the emperors, it had assumed a very inharmonious aspect, for many chambers, intended for the peculiar customs of Roman life, stood, still retaining the old magnificence of their arrangements, unused and neglected. Cobwebs covered the mosaic of the rich baths of Honorius, and in the toilet-chamber of Placidia the lizards climbed over the marble frames of the silver mirrors on the walls. On the one side, the necessities of a more warlike court had obliged the removal of many walls, in order to change the small rooms of the ancient building into wider halls for arsenals, banqueting and guard-rooms, and, on the other, neighbouring houses had been joined to the palace by new walls, so as to create a stronghold in the middle of the city.