I had regained consciousness before he began to speak and heard
most of what he said. He spoke well.
His chief point was that a gem-expert and art-amateur like me, knowing
that he was to inherit one of the finest and most carefully chosen
collections of gems and art objects in all the world, would be the last
man on earth to allow it to be disturbed, let alone to plot its
ransacking, the pillage of its cases and the dispersal of their precious
contents. No man could better have exposed the absurdity of the whole
flimsy and preposterous fabrication that I had had two confederates, who
had, in my interest and at my suggestion, robbed first the _triclinium_
and then the gem-collection, after which last I had myself murdered Falco.
But his logic, his lucidity and his eloquence fell on deaf ears.
Ravillanus was unmoved. He permitted Lustralis to make a rambling and
incoherent harangue, setting forth his ridiculous contentions.
Then he passed judgment:
"I hold you all innocent save Phorbas alone. Dromo is manifestly devoted
to Phorbas and has lied in his behalf. But Dromo, apparently, was no
accomplice in the plot or in the murder. I acquit him with the rest.
Phorbas, who vilely plotted against his master, who foully murdered him, I
adjudge guilty of his death and I hereby condemn him to be kept chained in
the slaves' prison until the next day of beast-fighting in the Colosseum,
then, in the arena, to be exposed to the ferocity of the famished wild
beasts of the desert, wilderness and forest, by them to be lacerated and
torn to pieces, as he richly deserves.
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