“My words are intended to convey that you have been an unfaithful steward, that I know what you would rather I should not know, that I have learned how you deal with the property entrusted to you, that you--” “That I?”--cried the steward trembling with rage and stepping close up to the Emperor. “That you,” shouted Hadrian in his face, “tried to sell this picture to this man; in short that you are a simpleton and a scoundrel into the bargain.” “I--I,” gasped Keraunus slapping his hand on his fat chest. “I--a--a--but you shall repent of these words.” Hadrian laughed coldly and scornfully, but Keraunus sprang on Gabinius with a wonderful agility for his size, clutched him by the collar of his chiton and shook the feeble little man as if he were a sapling, shrieking meanwhile: “I will choke you with your own lies--serpent, mean viper!” “Madman!” cried Hadrian “leave hold of the Ligurian or by Sirius you shall repent it.” “Repent it?” gasped the steward. “It will be your turn to repent when Caesar comes. Then will come a day of reckoning with false witnesses, shameless calumniators who disturb peaceful households, while credulous idiots--” “Man, man,” interrupted Hadrian, not loudly but sternly and ominously, “you know not to whom you speak.” “Oh I know you--I know you only too well. But I--I--shall I tell you who I am?” “You--you are a blockhead,” replied the monarch shrugging his shoulders contemptuously. Then he added calmly, with dignity--almost with indifference: “I am Caesar.” At these words the steward’s hand dropped from the chiton of the half-throttled dealer. Speechless and with a glassy stare he gazed in Hadrian’s face for a few seconds. Then he suddenly started, staggered backwards, uttered a loud choking, gurgling, nameless cry, and fell back on the floor like a mass of rock shaken from its foundations by an earthquake. The room shook again with his fall.