Our host, perhaps, had had no need of the rope so kindly recommended to him by Lydon, had he remained three minutes longer in that position.  But, summoned to his assistance by the noise of his fall, a woman, who had hitherto kept in an inner apartment, rushed to the scene of battle.  This new ally was in herself a match for the gladiator; she was tall, lean, and with arms that could give other than soft embraces.  In fact, the gentle helpmate of Burbo the wine-seller had, like himself, fought in the lists—­nay under the emperor’s eye.  And Burbo himself—­Burbo, the unconquered in the field, according to report, now and then yielded the palm to his soft Stratonice.  This sweet creature no sooner saw the imminent peril that awaited her worse half, than without other weapons than those with which Nature had provided her, she darted upon the incumbent gladiator, and, clasping him round the waist with her long and snakelike arms, lifted him by a sudden wrench from the body of her husband, leaving only his hands still clinging to the throat of his foe.  So have we seen a dog snatched by the hind legs from the strife with a fallen rival in the arms of some envious groom; so have we seen one half of him high in air—­passive and offenceless—­while the other half, head, teeth, eyes, claws, seemed buried and engulfed in the mangled and prostrate enemy.  Meanwhile, the gladiators, lapped, and pampered, and glutted upon blood, crowded delightedly round the combatants—­their nostrils distended—­their lips grinning—­their eyes gloatingly fixed on the bloody throat of the one and the indented talons of the other.

‘Habet! (he has got it!) habet!’ cried they, with a sort of yell, rubbing their nervous hands.

‘Non habeo, ye liars; I have not got it!’ shouted the host, as with a mighty effort he wrenched himself from those deadly hands, and rose to his feet, breathless, panting, lacerated, bloody; and fronting, with reeling eyes, the glaring look and grinning teeth of his baffled foe, now struggling (but struggling with disdain) in the gripe of the sturdy amazon.

‘Fair play!’ cried the gladiators:  ‘one to one’; and, crowding round Lydon and the woman, they separated our pleasing host from his courteous guest.

But Lydon, feeling ashamed at his present position, and endeavoring in vain to shake off the grasp of the virago, slipped his hand into his girdle, and drew forth a short knife.  So menacing was his look, so brightly gleamed the blade, that Stratonice, who was used only to that fashion of battle which we moderns call the pugilistic, started back in alarm.

‘O gods!’ cried she, ’the ruffian!—­he has concealed weapons!  Is that fair?  Is that like a gentleman and a gladiator?  No, indeed, I scorn such fellows.’  With that she contemptuously turned her back on the gladiator, and hastened to examine the condition of her husband.