And he, the ruler of the world, had thought it impossible that one, even one of his millions of subjects, should have prayed for him.

Who awaited him with a longing heart?
Where was his home?
He had first seen the light in Gaul.

His father was an African; his mother was born in Syria.

The palace at Rome, his residence, he did not care to remember.

He traveled about the empire, leaving as wide a space as possible between himself and that house of doom, from which he could never wipe out the stain of his brother's blood.
And his mother?
She feared--perhaps she hated him--her first-born son, since he had killed her younger darling.