He exchanged jokes with his fellow-officers; scolded a soldier who had come away without his sword in his sheath; asked Antonius, when he came across him, if he did not envy Achilles for his country-seat.

It was as if he were going on the same tedious march of days and days gone by.

Yet, with it all he felt himself far more intensely excited than ever before.

He knew that his calm was so unnatural that he wished to cry aloud, to run, weep, to do anything to break it.

This was to be the end of the great drama that had begun the day Lentulus and Marcellus first sat down as consuls! Slowly, slowly, that long snake, the marching army, dragged out of the camp.