"They must be ill or too fatigued."
"We've even opened their jaws and shoved the food down their throats. They cough it up again."
"Ah! by Jupiter, those foul beasts will be the death of me! We must release them after the first day in the arena or else they will die of hunger," groaned Hortensius falling into a chair.
Arsinoë contemplated him with envy. He at least was not tired of life.
She passed into an isolated chamber whence the windows looked down on the garden. There in the calm moonlight her young sister Myrrha, who was now about sixteen years old, was softly touching the strings of a harp, and the notes were falling like tears. Arsinoë kissed Myrrha, who answered her by a smile without ceasing to play. A loud whistle sounded behind the garden wall:
"It is he," said Myrrha, rising. "Come quickly!"
She grasped Arsinoë's hand tightly. The two young girls threw black cloaks over their shoulders and went out. The wind was chasing the clouds along, and the moon, sometimes hidden, sometimes shone out brightly. Arsinoë opened a door in the outer wall of the house. A young man wrapped in a monk's hooded mantle was awaiting them.
"We are not late, Juventinus?" asked Myrrha.
"I was afraid that you were not coming!"
They walked long and rapidly down narrow lanes, then out among the vineyards, issuing at length into the Roman plain. In the distance the brick-built aqueduct of Servius Tullius was outlined against the sky. Juventinus turned round and said—