I ordered you at once into the
Tullianum, pending my decision as to how to wring from you a complete
disclosure of your villainies and accomplices before putting you to death.
"Then, to my amazement, the confession of the King of the Highwaymen
represented you as a wholly innocent man, incredibly slandered and
calumniated, and all by Marcus Galvius Crispinillus, why and for what end
was unknown.
"I at once ordered you released and brought to the Palace. Here I have
kept you in unmerited confinement until the papers of your traducer could
be sifted and I could go over those relevant to your case. Manifestly you
never had anything to do with inciting any conspiracy or any march on
Rome. All aspersions on you were invented by Crispinillus. I am
inexpressibly curious about you. I want you to tell me your story in your
own way, in detail, taking your time. In particular I want to learn how
you came to be with Maternus and later with the mutineers from Britain. I
am at leisure to harken."
He had put me entirely at my ease. Manifestly he wanted to hear my story,
was in the mood to listen, and rather enjoyed the respite from care which
this carefully arranged interval of leisure gave him. I felt emboldened
and began with an explanation of the feud between the Satronians and the
Vedians, of the lawsuit between Ducconius Furfur and my uncle, and of his
purchase of Marcia from Ummidius Quadratus and his manumission of her.
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