SOME months later, during one of the brief and infrequent breathing
spells in his ten years’ fight to beat off the raids of the Marcomanni
and other Germanic tribes, Aurelius returned from the Rhine frontier
to Rome. As soon as she was reasonably sure that the Emperor was rested
from the fatigues of his journey and had disposed of the worst of his
accumulated routine duties, Brinnaria sought a second audience with the
chief of the nation.
She was then a tall, grave girl of nineteen, looking and behaving like
a woman of twenty-five. Very handsome she was, full-fleshed without a
trace of plumpness, fun breasted without a hint of overabundance. Her
brown hair, now grown long again after its ceremonial shearing at her
entrance into the order of Vestals, was so dark that it was almost
black. Arranged in the six braids traditional for Vestals and wound
round her head like a coronet it became her notably. Her complexion
was creamy, with a splendid brilliant color that came and went in her
cheeks. Her expression of face was an indescribable blend of kindliness
and haughtiness towards others, of austerity and cheerfulness inwardly,
of intellectuality and comprehension towards life at large. She had
acquired the statuesqueness of the conventional Vestal attitudes and
movements, but she sat and stood so that all beholders felt a vivid
impression of her vitality, of reserve strength, incomparably beyond
anything possessed by her five colleagues.
Her stately pacing as she walked always appeared the conscious restraint
of what, of itself, would have been a swinging stride. She wore her
clothes with an unanalyzable difference, with a sort of effrontery, as
Calvaster put it in talking of her to his cronies.
On her way to the palace, erect in her white robe amid the gorgeous
crimson hangings of her gilded state coach, she meditated on the great
dissimilarity between the feelings with which she had gone to her first
audience with the Emperor and those with which she now approached his
abode. Then she had been palpitating with conscientious scruples and
childish dreads, now she was sure of herself and of her errand; then she
had thought chiefly of her mother and of the traditions of her family
and clan, now not only her mother was dead, but the whole family of
the Epulones had perished except herself and the Brinnarian clan was
represented by but three families, her relationship to which was fainter
than any assignable degree of cousinship; then she had been full of
elation at her lofty position in the world, now she was perfectly at
home in her environment and felt no emotion at the thought of it.
At the palace she found herself in the same vast room, alone with a
somewhat older and graver Emperor, now sole ruler of their world since
the death of his colleague, Lucius Verus. He greeted her kindly, with an
air of effort to conceal his weariness, and when both were seated asked
her errand.
“In the first place,” she said, “I want you to tell me whether you are
satisfied with the reports you have had of me.”
Aurelius half smiled.
“I am well pleased in respect to all your actions but one,” he said.
“You have certainly done better than I expected or hoped. You have
curbed your wild nature so well that, of late years, you have behaved
altogether as a Vestal should. Even earlier your conduct was creditable,
since from the very day of your promise to me, your outbursts were less
and less frequent and also less and less violent. Once only have you
acted so that I felt displeased when I heard what you had done and feel
somewhat displeased even yet.”
“I suppose,” Brinnaria ruminated, “you mean my larruping Bambilio.”
“Yes,” Aurelius admitted. “That was in a sense unforgivable. Had I been
in Rome at the time I must have animadverted upon it with the greatest
severity.”
“If you had been in Rome at the time,” spoke Brinnaria boldly, “I should
not have been flogged by any mere deputy Pontifex of Vesta. It would
have been incumbent upon you, as Pontifex Maximus, yourself to give
me my ceremonial scourging. To you I should have been, of course, as
submissive after my beating as while it was going on. No harm would have
been done.”
The Emperor smiled more than a half smile.
“I am not sure,” he said, “that any harm was done, anyhow.”
“What!” cried Brinnaria. “You excuse me? You defend me?”
“Softly! Softly!” the Emperor caveatted, raising his hand. “I do not
acquit you nor exonerate you. But I do make allowances. And we must
distinguish. We must not confuse the causes of my disapprobation of what
you did with my reasons for believing that no harm resulted. Nor, for
that matter, must we confound with either of them those qualities
in yourself and those circumstances of the case which make me feel,
illogically perhaps, but very possibly, more inclined to thank you than
to censure you.”
“Castor be good to me!” cried Brinnaria. “Am I dreaming?”
“Don’t interrupt, you disrespectful minx,” the Emperor laughed; “this is
a lecture. Hear it out.
“In the first place you were technically right in saying that there
is not one word in any sacred writing or in the pronouncements of the
Pontiffs or the statutes of the Vestals to forbid a flogged Vestal from
beating her scourger. Just as Solon in the code of laws which he drew up
for the Athenians prescribed no penalty for the slayer of his father or
mother, because, as he explained when the omission was pointed out to
him, he had thought that no child would ever kill its parents; so no
framer of rubrics ever foresaw the necessity of forbidding what no one
conceived of as possible. All persons were assumed to be too much in
awe of Pontiffs, for anyone to dare to raise a hand against any Pontiff,
least of all a Vestal against her spiritual father. The world had to
wait for a Brinnaria to demonstrate that the unimaginable could come to
pass.
“Yet the very fact that it was nowhere written down that you must not do
it makes your act all the worse. It was monstrous.
“But fortunately it was not sacrilegious. The person of the Pontifex of
Vesta is not sacrosanct and a blow inflicted on him is not to be rated
as impious. Your act called for no expiation, personal or official. It
did not desecrate him, or you, nor the place where it occurred.
“Besides, I cannot resist admitting to you,”--and the Emperor smiled an
unmistakable smile--“that this particular Pontiff of Vesta is farther
from being sacrosanct than any of his predecessors. As far as I can
learn, Faltonius is a worthy man, pious and scrupulous. But he is
absurdly unfitted for his office in appearance and in manner. The
self-importance he assumes, the pomposity with which he performs his
duties, would be too great even for an Emperor. He irritates all of
us. All of us have wished, secretly or openly, many, many times, that
Bambilio would be soundly thrashed. He has been. You did it. The story
was too good to keep. It has not, of course, been allowed to leak out,
and become common property. But it is known to all the Flamens, Augurs
and Pontiffs.
“I need not describe to you the feelings of my colleagues, nor my
own. To hint them is perhaps too much; to particularize them would be
unseemly. I may say, however, that just as street-boys acclaim you by
shouting:
“‘That’s the girl that saved the dog;’ just as all over the Empire you
are talked of as the lady who rescued the retiarius; so at any festival
or ceremonial in which the Vestals take part, many a dignitary is likely
to nudge his neighbor, indicate you and whisper:
“‘That’s the priestess who walloped Bambilio!’ You are not infamous, you
are famous.
“As for myself I am the more inclined to feel indulgent towards you
because I understand how you felt. You were boiling with rage at being
struck by any one, as any noble girl would be. Yet you would have
controlled your fury but for the fact that you knew that you yourself
had done nothing to deserve chastisement, that you were suffering for
another’s fault.”
“What!” cried Brinnaria.
“Oh, yes,” Aurelius continued, easily. “Causidiena and I are quite
agreed on that point. Neither she nor I have questioned Meffia, and we
do not mean to; partly because we are sure enough, without any admission
from her; partly because the matter is best left as it is, without any
further notice. But, with the exception of Meffia, it is quite certain
that, from the Vestals themselves down to the last slave-girl, every
resident of the Atrium believes that not you but Meffia let the fire go
out, and that you took the blame due her. And we can all conjecture your
motives, as we all applaud them.
“Meffia might never have survived a scourging, might have been ailing
for months. Rome wants no sick Vestals nor dead Vestals. Causidiena is
grateful to you, all the Atrium is grateful, I am grateful.”
“But,” said Brinnaria, wide-eyed, “I had supposed that, if Meffia was
suspected, there would be an inquisition and testimony under oath and
that it would be obligatory that the Vestal actually at fault must be
scourged.”
“For once,” the Emperor smiled, “you have failed to read accurately the
statutes of the order. It is positively refreshing. I was beginning to
feel that you were altogether too accurate. In fact the scourging of a
delinquent Vestal is a mere disciplinary regulation, designed to assure
the maintenance of the fire. It is not in the nature of a mandatory
atonement. It has nothing in common with an act of expiation. It has
nothing to do with placating or propitiating the Goddess. It has no
likeness whatever to the punishment of a guilty Vestal.”
“That reminds me,” said Brinnaria, “of what I came for. I’m as grateful
as possible for what you have said to me, surprised that Causidiena and
you so easily saw through my deception, delighted that you take it as
you have, more than delighted to find you so kindly disposed towards me.
I need all the kindness you can feel towards me. I want to come to
the point, to the reason why I am here. I want you to answer me this
question: Suppose I were accused of the worst possible misconduct,
formally accused before you, what then?”
“Then,” said Aurelius, “you would have a fair trial.”
“I believe I should,” said Brinnaria. “You would be perfectly fair and
entirely just. And a fair trial would be a novelty. Almost never has an
accused Vestal had a fair trial.”
“Not even if acquitted?” the Emperor suggested slyly.
“No,” Brinnaria retorted vigorously. “Even most of those absolved were
not tried fairly. Postumia was, if the records from so long ago are to
be trusted. The first trial of the third Licinia was perfectly fair, the
minutes are very full and there is no shade of bias in the discussion of
her many interviews with Crassus, while the court was plainly genuinely
amused at his greed for desirable real-estate and at his artifices to
induce her to sell cheap. Fabia, in the same year, was justly treated.
But most of the other acquittals were quite as bad as most of the
convictions to my mind. I can discover almost no trial where both sides
had a full hearing, where the judges tried to get at the facts and kept
their attention on the evidence, where the finding as the expression of
the opinions rather than of the partiality of the Pontiffs. Almost
every verdict on record, it seems to me, was dictated by favoritism or
influence or prejudice or wrath.”
“You seem to think you know a great deal about the subject of trials of
Vestals,” Aurelius remarked.
“I feel justified in thinking so,” Brinnaria maintained. “Where the
minutes of the court have perished, as, of course, in the case of all
the trials before the capture and burning of the city by the Gauls, I
have read what records remain. Where the court records are extant I have
pored over every word of the minutes of the proceedings and of every
document attached.”
“That is more than ever I found time to do,” Aurelius meditated. “Your
conclusions ought to be of interest. What are they?”
Brinnaria drew a deep breath and went on. “I am convinced,” she said,
“that sometimes the accused received what she deserved, but generally
by accident. The judges were swayed by politics or expediency or
clan-feeling or popular clamor or self-interest, not by reason.
“Nobody could form any judgment, at this distance of time, about the
guilt or innocence of Oppia or Opimia or Popilia or Porphilia or Orbilia
or Orbinia or whatever her real name was, it all happened so long ago.
But Minucia and Sextilia and Floronia and the rest were just victims of
judicial ferocity, as far as I can make out.”
“You are then of the opinion,” the Emperor asked, “that there never was
a guilty Vestal?”
“No,” Brinnaria replied judicially, “I don’t go as far as that.
Varonilla was probably depraved and with her the two Oculatas. I don’t
think their suicides prove anything against them, for a woman is just as
likely to hang herself because she despairs of a fair hearing as because
she is conscious of guilt. What weighs with me is that they were brought
up in the dissolute times of Messalina and Nero and that their relatives
were leaders of the most profligate set in Rome, cronies of Vitellius
and his coterie. But although Cornelia was bred and raised in the same
social atmosphere, I am quite as sure of her innocence as all the
world was the day she was buried and as everybody has been ever since.
Domitian just murdered her without a trial, for political reasons
and for moral effect. So likewise Marcia and the second Licinia were
judicially murdered by that fierce old Cassius Longinus Ravilla. He was
elected to convict them, not to try them, and he conducted the trial
not to arrive at a fair verdict, but to force a conviction. He had some
excuse, for their acquittal on their former trial had been brought about
by idiotic bribing and family influence. On the face of the evidence
at both trials they were clearly blameless. What ruined them was their
trying to shield Aurelia, surely the worst Vestal on record, for she had
everything in her favor, ancestry, upbringing and surroundings; she
was beyond doubt innately vicious. She was the only Vestal ever justly
convicted and justly punished, in my opinion. All the others were
irreproachable women, doomed to a frightful fate by prejudiced judges.
In general, an accused Vestal is as good as condemned, the whole
population so dreads the results of acquitting an unclean priestess. And
it is the easiest thing in the world for a Vestal to be accused. Refuse
to sell a farm for half its value, snub a bore, order a slave flogged
for some unbearable blunder, and the result is the same; false
accusation with perjured witnesses and a quick conviction most likely to
follow.”
“The subject seems to have occupied your mind a great deal,” Aurelius
ruminated.
“Do you wonder?” Brinnaria flamed at him. “What in all the tragic,
dramatic history of Rome is half so dramatic or a tenth so tragic as the
burial of a Vestal? In all our centuries of ferocity, what seems half so
cruel?
“I know that cruelty played no part in the invention of burial alive
as a punishment for a convicted Vestal. I know that no caitiff could
be found so vile as to dare to lay hands on a Vestal, no ruffian so
reckless as to venture to end her life by sword or axe, by strangling
or drowning. The most impious miscreant has too much fear of the gods to
injure a consecrated priestess. The only way to dispose of a delinquent
Vestal is to bury her alive. But the cruelty of it makes me choke. I
think of the last hours of each of those who were punished, of their
thoughts as the time drew near, of their feelings alone in the dark
waiting for death to release them from their sufferings.
“I think of these underground cells as they are now, out there under
that awful unkempt, ragged waste lot by the Colline Gate. I think of the
skeletons mouldering on the mouldering cots, of the bones, the fragments
of crumbling bones, the dust of crumbled bones on the stone floors, as
they have been for hundreds of years, as they will be for thousands of
years to come. The cot cannot yet have decayed from under what is left
of poor Cornelia; her bones must still be entire and in order on the
webbing; Aurelia’s bones must be whole yet and Licinia’s and Marcia’s;
of Floronia there can hardly be left a trace by now, where Minucia died
there can be only an empty stone cell. Do you wonder that the subject
haunts me?”
“I do and I do not,” Aurelius replied. “I’ve let you relieve your mind
by talking yourself tired. Now listen to me. I think I understand you
perfectly. When you came to me before the novel responsibilities of your
office had worn on your nerves and you were quivering with dread
for fear you might be an unworthy priestess. Now the perils of your
situation are wearing on your nerves and you are brooding over the
possibility of accusation, trial, conviction and burial alive.
“I sympathize with you. As an Emperor I am exposed to the perpetual
danger of assassination. You would be amazed if I detailed to you my
various narrow escapes from death at the hands of disappointed seekers
after preferment, of incompetent officials, of knaves with grievances
of every conceivable and inconceivable variety and of fools with no
grievance at all. You would be astonished if I merely reckoned the
occasions on which I have just missed being killed. It gets on my
nerves, more or less, of course. But I strive to bear up and remain calm
and I succeed more or less. I keep before me the fact that as an
Emperor I am obnoxious to countless hatreds from fancied slights and to
uncountable schemes of revenge. I reflect that the danger is inseparable
from the state of my being an Emperor. I try to be philosophical about
it.
“So you must attempt to remain placid under the strain of the knowledge
that you are exposed to perpetual danger of a horrible death from
conviction on false accusation. It is part of the condition of being a
Vestal. If anything goes wrong in the way of earthquake, flood, famine,
pestilence, conflagrations or defeats, the populace are likely to cry
out that some Vestal is unclean and bringing down on the Empire the
wrath of the gods. That nothing of the kind has occurred during our
recent afflictions has been clearly due to the holiness of Dossonia and
Causidiena and to their reputation for strict discipline. But the danger
of popular outcry is always real. Then there is the fact that far too
large a proportion of our population are dissolute and that, among the
dissolute-minded, all Vestals are under suspicion because they are the
only women among our nobility who remain unmarried long after they have
reached marriageable years. You must learn to take all this as a matter
of course and to go sedately about your duties.
“Of course, I lessen my danger by keeping about me many trusty guards.
It is right that you should appeal to me in your anxiety. I shall do
what I can to lessen your danger. I believe in you. If you were accused
before me it would take notably plain and convincing evidence to make
me believe anything against you. I shall put my opinion of you on record
among my papers of instructions to my successor. I shall declare it to
all the Chief Pontiffs. I shall verbally and in writing make it clear to
all concerned that you seem to me all you should be, that you are in an
unusually difficult and delicate position and that in case of accusation
all presumption should be in favor of your innocence and against the
sincerity of your accusers.
“And now I think that ought to satisfy you and cover all the general
considerations. Let us come to the special consideration that interests
me chiefly. You have never come to me because you became gradually
unnerved by brooding which had no specific origin or cause:
“Tell me plainly and outspokenly what has happened to you lately to
fill your mind with thoughts of buried Vestals, trials, accusations and
terrors?”
Brinnaria thereupon related her encounter with Calvaster and her
conversation with Flexinna.
The Emperor stroked his beard and reflected.
“I have never liked Calvaster,” he said, “and if I had been in the city
to consider recommendations for appointments he would, assuredly, never
have become a member of Rome’s hierarchy. I deem him gravely unsuited
for even the most minor grade of Pontiff. He appears to me to be
mean-spirited, narrow-minded and base. I am inclined to believe of him
all that you impute. But, even to such as Calvaster, we should be just.
You complained, a while ago, that the judges of the Vestals had ignored
both the facts and the evidence. Let us weigh the evidence and stick
to the facts. The only fact you present is that you caught Calvaster
lurking in your house. You confess that you were completely puzzled as
to what motive brought him there. Your friend surmises an explanation
which disgusts, insults and alarms you. You instantly credit it
completely, think and act as if it were unquestionably true. I am
prejudiced against Calvaster, as I have told you, yet I am by no means
ready to admit that your beliefs about him are evidence against
him, more particularly as they rest solely on Flexinna’s ingenious
conjectures. The notion is plausible and it is entirely congruent with
Calvaster’s character as I imagine it. Yet it is, after all, merely
a plausible surmise. I am just as inclined to accept Calvaster’s own
explanation; he is an inquisitive busybody.
“My verdict is that you need feel no alarm.”
“But I do,” Brinnaria maintained; “I do not feel safe with Calvaster
anywhere about.”
The Emperor reflected.
“The peace of mind of a Vestal,” he said, “is a matter of such
importance to the state that I should not hesitate about ordering
Calvaster banished to some comfortable and healthy island and there
detained permanently, were it not that the fellow has made himself
almost indispensable. The pestilence has carried off practically all the
adepts at interpretation of the sacred writings, the prophetic books,
the rubrics and rituals of the various temples, the statutes of
the brotherhoods and other orders of the hierarchy. Only Numerius
Aproniarius remains of the older experts, and he is afflicted by an
incurable and loathsome disease which he cannot long survive. Of the
younger men only Calvaster has displayed any aptitude for learning this
delicate and complex art, only he has attained any reputation. He is, in
the circumstances, indispensable, I cannot banish him merely to please
you. You will have to endure Calvaster.”
Brinnaria pulled a wry face, as in her mutinous girlhood. She felt
entirely at ease with Aurelius.
“I perceive that I must endure him,” she said, “but if you cannot banish
Calvaster, perhaps you’ll oblige me by banishing Almo.”
“Almo!” the Emperor exclaimed, “what can you have against that gallant
lad? Have you turned against him? I thought you were unshakably resolved
to marry him, thought you loved him unalterably!”
“I shall marry him, if we both live,” Brinnaria replied, “and most
unalterably love him. But I love life and daylight and fresh air and my
full meals even more. I have a splendid appetite, I loath stuffy places,
I hate the dark. The idea of being shut in an underground cell to
suffocate slowly or starve to death even more slowly goes against my
gorge. I see myself in my mind’s eye climbing down that ladder, like
poor Cornelia, I see myself stretched out on my cot, watching the ladder
being pulled up by the executioner, watching the workmen fitting in the
last stone of the vault. I imagine myself staring at the wick of the
lamp and wondering how long the oil will last and debating whether it
would be better to blow out the light and save the oil to drink and
so live longer in the dark, or to let the lamp burn out and have the
discomfort of the light a little longer. I fancy myself conning over
the trifle of bread, milk, fruit and wine left on the stone slab, and
speculating as to how long they’ll keep me alive.
“Bah!
“No burial alive for me.
“Acquittal on a trial is a poor way for a Vestal to escape the worst
possible fate, a last resort, at best, and an unchancy reliance, even as
a last resort. A far better way is never to be tried, and the best way
never to be tried is never to be accused. You’ve been good enough to
tell me that if I were accused you’d be predisposed to favor me in all
possible ways and that you’ll give instructions as to your opinion of
me. Any directions of yours would be respected by any heir of yours. But
you yourself have just remarked how slender is an Emperor’s hold on life
or on power. I may survive both yourself and your son. I might be tried
before men we should never think of now. I must arrange so that I shall
never be tried at all, I must live so that I shall never be accused.
“Now I am unlikely ever to be accused in relation to any man except
Almo. Everybody knows I mean to marry Almo when my service is at an end,
everybody knows he means to marry me, everybody knows we are in love
with each other. That puts me in the most delicate position any Vestal
ever was placed in. I have been extremely careful. I have never spoken
to Almo since I was taken for a Vestal, have never met him except by
accident, have never set eyes on him except against my will; have never
even written a letter to him or received one from him. I have been, I
think, wise, judicious and controlled. But Almo has not behaved well
towards me.”
“Indeed!” Aurelius interjected. “You surprise me! What has he done?”
Brinnaria flushed.
“A girl in love,” she said, “is a fool, but she has sense enough to
conceal her foolishness. A man is different. I suppose men are made that
way and can’t help themselves. But a man in love is not only a fool, but
he parades his foolishness. Almo sent me messages by all sorts of mutual
acquaintances, by his people and mine, by Flexinna, by Nemestronia, by
Vocco, begging me to exchange letters with him. I was angry and said
so and repeatedly sent him word that he was most foolish and most
inconsiderate. I sent him word that if he wanted to please me he’d
ignore my existence and stay as far from me as possible.
“He actually begged his father to be allowed to come to Rome. His father
had the good sense to keep him at Falerii. Now that all his relatives
are dead and he is his own master he has come to Rome. If he had any
real consideration for me he’d go to Aquileia, at least he might be
satisfied with a popular resort like Baiae or a place like Capua; Capua
has enough baths and shows and horse-races and gladiators for anybody.
“But he must come to Rome, when a spark of sense and decency would tell
him to keep as far away as he could. It stands to reason that I could
never be accused of misconduct with him if he had never been within a
hundred miles of me since I was taken for a Vestal.
“But he must needs come to Rome. He has opened his house on the Carinae
and had it put in order and has settled down to such a life here as is
usual with wealthy leisured idlers. He has bought additional furniture,
as if his father’s house wasn’t stuffed with everything magnificent, he
has bought curios and antiques and statuary and pictures and books. He
spends most of his time in the barracks of his favorite gladiatorial
company or at the stables of the Greens, and the rest of it at the
afternoon baths. I sent Vocco to him to protest and to urge him to leave
Rome for my sake. The selfish wretch said he loved me and always would,
but he just could not live anywhere except at Rome. He stays here, in
defiance of my wishes and against all reason.”
“That is not what I should have expected of him,” the Emperor meditated.
“I am surprised and far from pleased. I shall certainly find means to
relieve your mind as far as he is concerned.”
“There is worse yet to tell,” Brinnaria went on. “You’d think that, if
he must stay in Rome he’d at least have the decency to keep away from
me and from places where he is likely to encounter me. He does just
the reverse. He haunts me, he waylays me. He prowls up and down the Via
Sacra and the Via Nova, he stands in the moonlight and stares up at the
outside windows of the Atrium; on festival days he waits outside of our
entrance to the Colosseum or of the Circus Maximus to watch me enter; on
any day he loiters about the portal of the Atrium to watch me come out
to my litter or my carriage, he dogs me on my airings.”
“Hercules!” Aurelius exclaimed. “This is too bad!”
“Too bad indeed,” Brinnaria pursued; “it would be bad enough from
anybody in his position, from him it is ten times worse than from anyone
else. You know how individual Almo is, how almost peculiar he looks,
how no one would mistake him for anyone else or forget him or fail to
recognize him. I have often tried to analyze the factors that go to
make him look so striking, but I cannot. He is perfectly proportioned
in every measurement, yet, somehow, he has a long-armed and long-legged
appearance different from that of any young man in Rome, he gives almost
the effect of reminding one of a spider or of a grasshopper or of
a daddy-long-legs. It makes him the most conspicuous, the most
recognizable man in all Rome. Why, if your son were to mingle in a
crowd, habited like any other boy in that crowd and Almo did the same,
and nobody in the crowd had any reason to expect to see either, Almo
would most likely be noticed sooner than Antoninus, recognized more
generally, more readily, further off and quicker.”
“You are right,” Aurelius mused, “I never thought of that, but Almo is
unforgettable, striking and arresting to the eye beyond any lad in our
nobility.”
“And being what he is,” Brinnaria raged, “he must needs arrange that
nearly every crowd I am in should see him at the same time as me.
Already thousands of reputable Romans must remember seeing us at the
same glance. Before long the majority will be ready to recall, if the
subject is broached, that they have habitually seen him wherever they
saw me. Some one will start the talk and presently all Rome will buzz
with the gossip that we are continually seen together. A charming state
of affairs for me if some busybody or some enemy of mine raises the
question of my fitness for my holy duties! I have protested. I’ve had
Vocco go to Almo and urge all these considerations on him, and the silly
boy says he can’t live without seeing me, that he longs for the sight
of me so he cannot control himself. How’s that for lover’s folly? One
minute he can’t live away from Rome, he loves Rome more than he loves
me; the next minute I’m the one object on earth which he must behold or
die. I’ve no patience with such imbecility.”
“And I have very little,” said the Emperor; “just enough to imagine a
better way of disburdening you and of disposing of Almo than banishing
him would be. The lad is far too good to be wasting his time with the
horse-jockeys and charioteers and ostlers of the Greens, or brutalizing
himself with the companionship of ruffianly prize-fighters, belonging to
this or that speculator in the flesh of ferocious savages. He must find
some outlet for his energies and interests and is carried away by the
fashionable mania, which is corrupting our whole population, especially
our young nobles, and which, even at his tender age, fills the thoughts
of my son, to the despair of his tutors.
“All Almo needs is worthy occupation. I’ll put the sea between him and
you and so put your mind at rest. I’ll make a man of him at the same
time. I’ll appeal to his pride and his patriotism. Rome needs such
keen-minded, capable youths on the frontiers. I’ll not give him too hard
or too unpleasant employment, not relegate him to Britain or Dacia
or Syria. I’ll send him to Africa to chase the desert nomads who are
harrying the borders of Numidia and Mauretania. He can gain credit there
without danger, can learn to command men and to know the great game
of war. Nepte and Bescera are pleasant little cities--he will be
comfortable between campaigns. I’ll see he sets out the day after
to-morrow, at latest.”