"But now is the moment!" cried Julian in vexation.
"Julian, rejoice! to-night your destiny is decided ... but make haste! Afterwards it will be too late."
The soothsayer looked at the hierophant; the hierophant at the soothsayer.
Julian stood between the two, in perplexity scrutinising both.
The faces of the augurs remained impenetrable.
"What is to be done?" he murmured to himself. Then he remembered, and exclaimed joyfully:
"One moment! I have an ancient book in my library, _Concerning Contradiction in Auguries_; we shall see!"
He hurried to the library; but in a passage he encountered the bishop Dorotheus, in sacerdotal dress, bearing the crucifix and the sacred Viaticum.
"The Viaticum for your wife, who is dying, O Cæsar!"
Dorotheus looked with severity at the robes of Julian, his pale face, and his blood-stained hands.
"Your wife," continued the bishop, "desires to see you before her death. Will you come?"
"Yes!... yes! later!... O gods!... another ill omen."
He entered the library and began to rummage among the parchments. Suddenly he heard a voice murmuring distinctly in his ear:
"Maximus, it is thou!" exclaimed Julian, wheeling round.
Julian's heart beat so strongly that he pressed his hand against his side; a cold sweat stood on his forehead.
"This--this is what I was waiting for!" murmured Julian. "The voice was 'his'; now, all doubt is over!... I will go!"
The barred gates had given way with a crash. Legionaries were pouring into the atrium, thrilling the old palace with their cries, while the crimson glare of the torches shone through the chinks of shutters like the light of a conflagration. Not a minute was to be lost. Casting away his white robes, Julian donned his armour, paludamentum, war cloak, and helmet, buckled on his sword, and ran down the principal staircase leading to the entrance. He opened the door and presented himself to the soldiers with a calm and unshaken demeanour. All doubts had disappeared. While in action his will never vacillated; but never up to that day had he been conscious of such a fulness of inward force, such clearness and self-possession of mind. In a moment the crowd felt that supremacy. The pale face of Julian was imperial and awe-striking, and at a gesture from him the mob was silenced. Julian spoke to the soldiers, asking them to restore order; he would neither abandon them nor permit that they should be taken from Gaul; on that head he would convince his well-beloved brother, the Emperor Constantius.