The roar that rose was the roar of wild beasts ravening for their prey.
The men, packed as they were, somehow surged forward. On the shoulders of
their fellow-centurions, a sort of billow of the foremost sergeants rose
like surf against a rock; like surf breaking against a rock a sort of foam
of them overflowed the front of the platform. For the twinkling of an eye
I beheld above this rising tide of executioners the imperious dignity of
the Emperor, master of the scene, self-confident and certain that all men
would approve of his decision, magnificent in his military trappings; the
incredulous amazement of Perennis, his pale, watery blue eyes bleared in
his lead-colored, bloodless face, as he stood dazed and numb; the horror
of his bedizened wife and sister, both fleshy women, dark-skinned and
normally red-cheeked, now gray with despair, like the two wretched lads
beside them; the cruelly feminine relish, as upon the successful fruition
of long and tortuous intrigues, blazoned on the faces of Marcia and of
Cleander's wife, a very showy woman with golden hair, violet eyes and a
delicately pink and white complexion: a similar expression of relished
triumph on the broad, fat, ruddy face of her big husband, who looked just
what he had been; a man who had started life as a slave; whose master had
thought him likely to be most profitably employed as a street porter, in
which capacity he had for years carried packs, crates, bales, chests,
rafters and such like immensely heavy loads long distances and had thriven
on his exertions; who, whatever brains he had since displayed, however
much character and merit had contributed to his dazzling rise in life, had
retained and still possessed a hearty appetite, a perfect digestion,
mighty muscles, hard and solid, all over his hulking frame, and the vast
strength of his early prime; all these chief actors framed against a
background of gaudily caparisoned officers and courtiers.
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