“I know her,” said Maximian, laughing, as if at the recollection of something very droll. “Poor thing! she sent me a splendid ring, and yesterday asked me for that wretched Sebastian’s life, just as they had finished cudgelling him to death.” And he laughed immoderately, then continued: “Yes, yes, by all means; a little inheritance will console her, no doubt, for the loss of that fellow. Let a rescript be made out, and I will sign it.” Tertullus produced the one prepared, saying he had fully relied on the emperor’s magnanimous clemency; and the imperial barbarian put a signature to it which would have disgraced a schoolboy. The prefect at once consigned it to his son. Scarcely had he left the palace, when Fulvius entered. He had been home to put on a proper court attire, and remove from his features, by the bath and the perfumer’s art, the traces of his morning’s passion. He felt a keen presentiment that he should be disappointed. Eurotas’s cool discussion of the preceding evening had prepared him; the cross of all his designs, and his multiplied disappointments that day, had strengthened this instinctive conviction. One woman, indeed, seemed born to meet and baffle him whichever way he turned; but, “thank the gods,” he thought, “she cannot be in my way here. She has this morning blasted my character for ever; she cannot claim my rightful reward; she has made me an outcast; it is not in her power to make me a beggar.” This seemed his only ground of hope. Despair, indeed, urged him forward; and he determined to argue out his claims to the confiscated property of Agnes, with the only competitor he could fear, the rapacious emperor himself. He might as well risk his life over it, for if he failed, he was utterly ruined. After waiting some time, he entered the audience-hall, and advanced with the blandest smile that he could muster to the imperial feet. “What want you here?” was his first greeting. “Sire,” he replied, “I have come humbly to pray your royal justice, to order my being put into immediate possession of my share of the Lady Agnes’s property. She has been convicted of being a Christian upon my accusation, and she has just suffered the merited penalty of all who disobey the imperial edicts.” “That is all quite right; but we have heard how stupidly you mismanaged the whole business as usual, and have raised murmurings and discontent in the people against us. So, now, the sooner you quit our presence, palace, and city, the better for yourself. Do you understand? We don’t usually give such warnings twice.” “I will obey instantly every intimation of the supreme will. But I am almost destitute. Command what of right is mine to be delivered over to me, and I part immediately.” “No more words,” replied the tyrant, “but go at once. As to the property which you demand with so much pertinacity, you cannot have it. We have made over the whole of it, by an irrevocable rescript, to an excellent and deserving person, the Lady Fabiola.”