Such an appeal as this was irresistible, and the boy, slight, slim and agile, would clamber over the side of the crow's-nest and down the ladder to the outstretched arms.
The boy's father had died when he was only three months old, and the grandfather had adopted the child as his heir, and brought Lucilla, the widowed mother, and her baby to live in his house.
Years before, the Consul's wife had passed away, and Faustina, his daughter, became the lady of the house. Lucilla and Faustina didn't get along very well together—no house is big enough for two families, some man has said. Lucilla was gentle, gracious, spiritual, modest and refined; Faustina was beautiful and not without intellect, but she was proud, domineering and fond of admiration. But be it said to the credit of the good old Consul, he was able to suffuse the whole place with love, and even if Faustina had a tantrum now and then, it did not last long.
There were always visitors in the household—soldiers home on furloughs, governors on vacations, lawyers who came to consult the wise and judicial Verus.
One visitor of note was a man by the name of Aurelius Antoninus. He was about forty years old as Marcus first remembered him—tall and straight, with a full, dark beard, and short, curly hair touched with gray. He was a quiet, self-contained man, and at first little Marcus was a bit afraid of him. Aurelius Antoninus had been a soldier, but he showed such a studious mind, and was so intent on doing the right thing that he was made an under-secretary, then private secretary to the Emperor, and finally he had been sent away to govern a rebellious province, and put down mutiny by wise diplomacy instead of by force of arms.
Aurelius Antoninus was inclined towards the Stoics, although he didn't talk much about it. He usually ate but two meals a day, worked with the servants, and wrote this in his diary, "Men are made for each other: even the inferior for the superior, and these for the sake of one another."
This philosophy of the Stoics rather appealed to the widow Lucilla, also, and she read Zeno with Aurelius Antoninus. Verus did not object to it—he had been a soldier and knew the advantages of doing without things and of being able to make the things you needed, and of living simply and being plain and direct in all your acts and speech. But Faustina laughed at it all—to her it was preposterous that one should wear plain clothing and no jewelry when he could buy the costliest and best; and why one should eschew wine and meat and live on brown bread and fruit and cold water, when he could just as well have spiced and costly dishes—all this was clear beyond her. Various fetes and banquets were given by Faustina, to which the young nobles were invited. She was a beautiful woman and never for a moment forgot it, and by some mistake or accident she got herself betrothed to three men at the same time. Two of these fought a duel and one was killed. The third man looked on and hoped both would be killed, for then he could have the woman. Faustina got this third man to challenge the survivor, and then by one of those strange somersaults of fate the unexpected occurred.
Faustina and Aurelius Antoninus were married.
It was a most queer mismating, for the man was plain, sincere and honorable, and she was almost everything else. Yet she had wit and she had beauty, and Aurelius had been living in the desert so long he imagined that all women were gentle and good. The Consul was very glad to unite his house with so fine and excellent a man as Aurelius; Lucilla cried for two days and more and little Marcus cried because his mother did, and neither cried because Faustina had gone away.
But grief is transient.