It was perfectly in keeping with the inconsistency of the mutineers that the crowd of men in the camp-square, instead of being marshalled by centuries under their sergeants, was allowed to assemble mob-fashion as each man came and pushed. Thus Agathemer and I, who should have been preparing to cook our company's evening meal, were not only in the throng, but well forward among the men and, in fact, pressed legs and chests against the legs and backs of two veterans not far from the rearmost centurions of the gathering of sergeants, not sixty feet from the platform, and nearly opposite its middle, though a little to the left. Few veteran privates heard and saw better than we. When the Imperial cortege arrived and the platform began to fill, we two, like the men around us and like, I feel sure, the entire gathering, were amazed to see among the men four women, and Agathemer and I were doubly amazed to recognize one as Marcia. Agathemer, who knew the former slaves and present freedwomen of the Palace far better than I, whispered that the others were the sister and wife of Perennis and the wife of Cleander, like him a former slave and pampered freedman, and for long his rival. The platform, of course, was lined and partly filled with aides, lictors, equerries, pages, and other Imperial satellites before the Emperor rode up, dismounted and appeared among his retinue. He strode springily to the front and seated himself on the crimson cushion of the ivory curule seat which a lictor placed for him. Marcia, to my tenfold amazement, then seated herself on a not dissimilar maple folding-seat, spread for her by a page. She was placed at the very front of the platform, next him on his right. Next her was Cleander's wife, also, to my still greater amazement, similarly seated, as were the two almost as ornately clad ladies with Perennis, who sat on his left, he standing to the left of the Emperor, who was set only a short yard in advance of the row of officials and intimates who lined the front of the platform. Until all who had a right to places on the platform had mounted it and each had stationed himself in his proper position, the Emperor sat quietly regarding the mob of men facing him, eyeing us keenly and steadily. An equerry leaned over and whispered to him and he stood up. I could feel the men thrill, even more positively than they had thrilled when he appeared from among his retinue. I conjectured, instantly, that he had felt, if not an actual dread of the mutineers, at least a doubt as to his ability to quell them and a need for all possible adventitious aids. Thus I explained to myself his having donned, that morning, trappings such as his father had worn on frontier campaigns, apparently with the purpose of eliciting the sympathies of the men.