Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 2).djvu/265

 he was unable to appreciate the fact that Theodora exercised a boundless dominion over her husband. He, therefore, not only neglected to pay his court to the Empress, but, contemning and resenting her interference in affairs, met her with a hostile countenance, and even went so far as to asperse her in conversation with Justinian. Becoming fully aware of his sentiments towards her, Theodora soon came to hate him with an intensity she displayed towards no other member of the bureaucracy. His ruin was long uppermost in her thoughts, and she sought assiduously for some opportunity of killing him without incurring the odium of the deed. On his side the Cappadocian was keenly perceptive of the enmity he had kindled against himself in the breast of his Imperial mistress, and lived in continual dread of her murderous intent. Although he was encompassed by thousands of private guards, such as no Praetorian Praefect had ever before maintained, and his palace was paraded by wakeful sentinels every hour of the day and night, he was unable to sleep without rising from time to time to explore with his eye every passage leading to his bedchamber, fearful lest some barbarian might be lurking in the dark ready at any instant to deal him his death-blow.

Such was the posture of affairs in relation to John until in the tenth year of his magistracy the inevitable catastrophe befell him. It was in 541, when Belisarius left his wife behind him at Constantinople, that Theodora unbosomed herself to her confidential friend, as that lady had now become, as to her grievances against the insolent Praefect. The wile-weaving Antonina immediately evolved a plot to