So keep these pages if they do reach you. They are not exactly letters; it is a sort of diary that I am sending to you. I shall expect no answer. Cethegus does not need me, at present. Why should Cethegus write to me, now? Yet perhaps I shall soon learn your opinion from your own lips. Do you marvel? True, we have not met since we studied together at Athens. But possibly I may soon seek you in your Italy. For I believe that the war declared to-day against the Vandals is but the prelude to the conflict with your tyrants, the Ostrogoths. Now I have written the great secret which at present is known to so few. It is a strange thing to see before one, in clear, sharp letters, a terrible fate, pregnant with blood and tears, which no one else suspects; at such times the statesman feels akin to the god who is forging the thunderbolt that will so soon strike happy human beings. Pitiable, weak, mortal god! Will your bolt hit the mark? Will it not recoil against you? The demi-god Justinian and the goddess Theodora have prepared this thunder-bolt; the eagle Belisarius will carry it; we are starting for Africa to make war upon the Vandals. Now you know much, O Cethegus. But you do not yet know all,--at least, not all about the Vandals. So learn it from me; I know. During the last few months I have been obliged to deliver lectures to the two gods--and the eagle--about these fair-haired fools. But whoever is compelled to deliver lectures has sense enough bestowed upon him to perform the task. Look at the professors at Athens. Since the reign of Justinian the lecture-rooms have been closed to them. Who still thinks them wise? So listen: The Vandals are cousins of your dear masters, the Ostrogoths. They came about a hundred years ago--men, women, and children, perhaps fifty thousand in number--from Spain to Africa. Their leader was a terrible king, Gizericus by name (commonly called Genseric); a worthy comrade of Attila, the Hun. He defeated the Romans in hard-fought battles, captured Carthage, plundered Rome. He was never vanquished. The crown passed to his heirs, the Asdings, who were said to be descended from the pagan gods of the Germans. The oldest male scion of the family always ascends the throne. But Genseric's posterity inherited only his sceptre, not his greatness. The Catholics in their kingdom (the Vandals are heretics, Arians) were most cruelly persecuted, which was more stupid than it was unjust. It really was not so very unjust; they merely applied to the Catholics, the Romans, in their kingdom the selfsame laws which the Emperor in the Roman Empire had previously issued against the Arians. But it was certainly extremely stupid. What harm can the few Arians do in the Roman Empire? But the numerous Catholics in the Vandal kingdom could overthrow it, if they should rebel. True; they will not rise voluntarily. But we are coming to rouse them.