What was this? What an unheard-of stroke of skill! The knife had hardly hit the lion, when he sank limp and helpless; he shuddered with a tremendous convulsion, and then rolled over stark and stiff in the sand.--He was dead.
Quintus could not believe his eyes--some demon, he thought, must have tricked his excited senses. How was it possible? One of these monstrous beasts, in whose side half a dozen of lances would sometimes be broken, before their tenacious vitality was spent--and this sudden death had resulted from a single stroke, though, it is true, a shrewd one?
But the uproarious applause of the crowd gave him no time to meditate upon the miracle.
"Mercy for Quintus Claudius!" was shouted in a thousand voices, and from every side.
"Caesar, release him! Pardon for Quintus Claudius!"
Pale as death, his lips set, his brows knit, Caesar sat impassible in the midst of the storm. Clodianus went up to him and, with a meaning smile, whispered something in his ear. Caesar angrily shook his head.[157]
"Pardon for Quintus Claudius! Pardon for his betrothed!" rang out incessantly, and louder than before, from every part of the Amphitheatre.
"My lord and husband," said Domitia, bowing with dignified and well-feigned indifference to her frowning sovereign, "your clemency will save him?"
"Never!" cried Domitian, rising from his seat.
He signed to the herald, and the tumult was hushed.
"Romans!" said Caesar in a voice like distant thunder. "You are demanding mercy for a man, who pronounced his own sentence of death. He had his life in his own hands. One word, one single word of recantation, and he was free. His obstinacy refused to speak the word. Romans, Caesar pardons none but those who repent."
"None but cowards!" shouted a voice from the top-seats.
"Pardon for Quintus Claudius!" the shouting began again--the building seemed to tremble at the terrific uproar.
"Quintus," murmured Cornelia, closing her eyes, "speak the word, that will set you free! You will not escape your fate a second time. Quintus, if ever you loved me...."
A melancholy smile and a look of utter devotion were the only response.
Again Clodianus made some remark, in an undertone, to the wrathful sovereign, and once more the herald commanded silence.