Maternus, in fact, looked soft. His very outline was plump, his feet and hands small, his toes and fingers delicate. He was not a handsome man, but he was by no means ill-looking and in some respects was almost boyish, or even girlish. He had glossy, straight brown hair, soft brown eyes, a complexion almost infantile in its rosy freshness, and all his features were small, his ears close to his head, his mouth even tiny, his nose likewise: and withal, Maternus was habitually mild, serene of expression, slow and soft of speech, and deliberate in all his movements. I never heard him raise his voice or speak or act hurriedly or urgently. Of course, I had been dumbfounded to find him in Italy and in the Apennines when everybody supposed him a hunted fugitive, hiding in the Pyrenees or the Cevennes; or even, perhaps, in the wilds of North Spain. Still more was I amazed at the boldness of a man who could conceive such plans for assassinating the Prince of our Republic and could feel serenely confident of being able to execute them. He was perfectly open with me. He had been a worshipper and adorer of Aurelius. If Aurelius had lived to a reasonable old age, he averred, the Republic would have been firmly established, the Empire solidified, the administration purified and the frontiers defended. Everything that had happened in the past five years he blamed on Commodus. It was the indifference of Commodus which had ruined the administration of the army, so that incompetent, dishonest, and tyrannical under-officers drove young patriots like himself into mutiny, outlawry and their consequences. Had Commodus been a capable ruler he and his fellow malcontents would have been listened to, placated and sent off, aflame with patriotic enthusiasm and bent on redeeming their past records, to hurl back from the hardest- pressed part of our frontiers the most dangerous foes of the Republic. Upon Commodus he blamed his mutiny, all the atrocities he had committed in the course of his insurrections, and all the blood he had shed, as well as all the towns he had sacked and burnt in the course of his raids; also on Commodus he blamed the destruction of his army of insurgents. He freely discussed with me his plans for assassinating Commodus. I could not deny that they were brilliantly conceived.