It was a piece of soft woollen stuff, daintily embroidered. The lawyer carried it everywhere to safeguard his precious throat from the faintest risk of cold.
Mamertinus nursed his own health like a lover, with so simple a grace, such a passion of self-solicitude, that his friends were instinctively constrained to think of nothing but nursing him too.
"This wrapper was embroidered for me by the venerable Fabiola," he informed them with a smile.
"Wife of the senator?" asked Hortensius.
"Yes! I'll tell you a little story about her. One day I wrote a note—a graceful trifle, but really a mere trifle—just five lines in Greek to another lady (also one of my admirers), who had sent me a basket of the most charming cherries. I thanked her in a frolicsome imitation of Pliny. But just imagine, my friends, Fabiola was seized with so violent a desire to read that letter and to copy it for her collection, that she sent two of her slaves to lie in wait for my messenger. So, brought to a halt in the middle of the night, not a soul in sight, he thought, of course, that brigands were about to strip him of lock, stock, and barrel. But they did him no harm, gave him money, and only took from him my letter, so that Fabiola might have the first reading of it. She actually learnt it by heart!"
"You don't mean it? Ah, I know her! She is a most remarkable woman," continued Lampridius. "I have seen myself that she keeps all your letters enclosed in a lemon-wood casket like so many jewels. She learns them by heart and declares that they are superior to any poetry. Fabiola argues, and argues rightly: 'Since Alexander the Great used to keep the poems of Homer in a cedar-wood coffer, why shouldn't I keep the letters of Mamertinus in a jewel-casket?'"
"This foie gras with saffron sauce is the height of perfection! I advise you to taste it."
"Who made it, Hortensius?"
"My head-cook, Dædalus."
"All honour to him!... he's a poet."