It
hasn't fallen on the floor. It's eatable."
"I'll be hungry enough before long," I replied, "but I am not hungry now.
I had eaten all I wanted and of the best just before I was haled here."
"Speak when you want any," he said. "It will be share and share alike here
for us till they come to finish us.
"And now, tell me about yourself. I have always been curious about you. I
heard all about you when you first got into trouble and I was told that
the official report of your death was fictitious, invented by underlings
too clumsy to capture you and fearful of the consequences of their
incompetence. Also I heard unimpeachable testimony that you were alive
later and had been seen in Rome with Maternus and outside Rome, the next
summer, with the mutineers from Britain. I have often wondered how you got
into such company. Tell me how you came to be with Maternus."
I saw no utility in any further dissimulation of anything or in any
reticence; I began with our springtime stay at the farm in the mountains,
and told my story in detail, from that hour.
When I came to my visit, along with Maternus, to the Temple of Mercury and
mentioned how Maternus had warned me that we were being watched, and how I
had shot one glance towards the watchers and had recognized one of them,
he interrupted me and, without enquiring where I had seen him before,
asked for a description of the watcher I had recognized.
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