Of the slave we know enough for the present. Corvinus was son, as we have said, to Tertullus, originally prefect of the Prætorium. This office, unknown in the republic, and of imperial creation, had, from the reign of Tiberius, gradually absorbed almost all civil as well as military power; and he who held it often discharged the duties of chief criminal judge in Rome. It required no little strength of nerve to occupy this post to the satisfaction of despotic and unsparing masters. To sit all day in a tribunal, surrounded with hideous implements of torture, unmoved by the moans or the shrieks of old men, youths, or women, on whom they were tried; to direct a cool interrogatory to one stretched upon the rack, and quivering in agony on one side, while the last sentence of beating to death with bullet-laden scourges was being executed on the other; to sleep calmly after such scenes, and rise with appetite for their repetition, was not an occupation to which every member of the bar could be supposed to aspire. Tertullus had been brought from Sicily to fill the office, not because he was a cruel, but because he was a cold-hearted, man, not susceptible of pity or partiality. His tribunal, however, was Corvinus’s early school; he could sit, while quite a boy, for hours at his father’s feet, thoroughly enjoying the cruel spectacles before him, and angry when any one got off. He grew up sottish, coarse, and brutal; and not yet arrived at man’s estate, his bloated and freckled countenance and blear eyes, one of which was half closed, announced him to be already a dissolute and dissipated character. Without taste for any thing refined, or ability for any learning, he united in himself a certain amount of animal courage and strength, and a considerable measure of low cunning. He had never experienced in himself a generous feeling, and he had never curbed an evil passion. No one had ever offended him, whom he did not hate, and pursue with vengeance. Two, above all, he had sworn never to forgive--the school-master who had often chastised him for his sulky idleness, and the school-fellow who had blessed him for his brutal contumely. Justice and mercy, good and evil done to him, were equally odious to him. Tertullus had no fortune to give him, and he seemed to have little genius to make one. To become possessed of one, however, was all-important to his mind; for wealth, as the means of gratifying his desires, was synonymous with him to supreme felicity. A rich heiress, or rather her dower, seemed the simplest object at which to aim. Too awkward, shy, and stupid to make himself a way in society, he sought other means, more kindred to his mind, for the attainment of his ambitious or avaricious desires. What these means were, his conversation with the black slave will best explain. “I have come to meet you at the Meta Sudans again, for the fourth time, at this inconvenient hour. What news have you for me?”