Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 5).djvu/232

196

The time is not auspicious, Sallust! Know you not that in the martial games, before we left Lutetia, my shield broke in pieces, so that only the handle remained in my grasp? And know you not that, when I was mounting my horse, the groom stumbled as I swung myself up from his folded hands?

Yet you gained the saddle, my lord!

But the man fell.

Better men will fall if Caesar loiters.

The Emperor is at death's door.

The Emperor still lives. The letters you wrote him as to your election

My enforced election. They constrained me, I had no choice.

The Emperor does not hold that explanation valid. He designs, as soon as he has mustered an army in the eastern provinces, to march into Gaul.

How know you that?