"Well," he pursued, "human nature, male or female, low-life or high-life, is the same in essence. Vedius and Satronius are so incensed with Caesar for balking their appetite for revenge on you that they are thirsting for revenge on Caesar and ready to forget all their hereditary animosities and join in abasing him. In fact, they have joined the league of patriots of which I am the leader. And they are so bent on their new purpose that they are ready to be hearty friends to anyone sworn as our confederate. I can arrange to obliterate, even to annihilate forever, all trace of enmity between you and either of them, if you will but agree to let your natural inherent patriotism overcome all other feelings in your heart and aid us to abolish the shame of our Republic and to safeguard the Commonwealth and the Empire." All this while I had been half listening to him, half occupied in trying to recall where I had seen the man who had stepped through the postern. At this instant, as Capito paused, I suddenly realized that he was the immobile horseman whom we had twice passed in the rain by the roadside the morning I had started from my villa for Rome. His hooked nose was unmistakable. Somehow this realization, along with the recollection of what Tanno had said of the fellow, woke me to a sense of the danger to which I was exposed by being with Capito and also to a sense of the craziness of his ideas and plans. I felt my face redden. "You have said enough!" I cut him short. "I perfectly understand. You think yourself the destined savior of Rome and the deviser of priceless plans for Rome's future. You are not so much a conspirator as a lunatic. Your schemes are half idiocy, half moonshine. I have pledged you my word to be secret as to what you have told me. My pledge holds if you now keep silent, rise from this seat and walk straight out to your litter, by the same way by which you came from it. If you utter another syllable to me, if you do not rise promptly, if you hesitate about going, if you linger on your path, I'll call my litter, I'll go straight to the Palace, I'll ask for a private audience, I'll wait till I get one, I'll tell the Emperor every word you have said to me. If you want protection for yourself from my pledge, leave me. Go!" He gave one glance at me and went. CHAPTER IX THE SQUALL OF THE LEOPARD When he was gone, when I had seen the postern door shut behind him, I felt suddenly weak and faint. I was amazed to find how exhausted I was left by the ebbing of the hot wave of indignation and rage which had surged through me as I revolted from his absurd and contemptible proposals. I felt flaccid and limp.