HEROD
Yes; the air is very sweet. Come, Herodias, our guests await us. Ah! I have slipped! I have slipped in blood! It is an ill omen. Wherefore is there blood here? . . . and this body, what does this body here? Think you I am like the King of Egypt, who gives no feast to his guests but that he shows them a corpse? Whose is it? I will not look on it.
FIRST SOLDIER
It is our captain, sire. He is the young Syrian whom you made captain of the guard but three days gone.
HEROD
I issued no order that he should be slain.
SECOND SOLDIER
He slew himself, sire.
HEROD
For what reason? I had made him captain of my guard.
SECOND SOLDIER
We do not know, sire. But with his own hand he slew himself.
HEROD
That seems strange to me. I had thought it was but the Roman philosophers who slew them-
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