Domitian did not let the bold youth finish his sentence. The mere mention of the name of Cinna had been enough to set his blood boiling. And now, what was this audacious, seditious, rebellious suggestion?—If he still kept some check on his anger, it was that the grave, steadfast figure of the Flamen floated, unbidden, before his eyes, and compelled his respect for all who bore his name. Still, the glance he threw at Quintus out of his cunning green eyes gave grounds for reflection.
“My dear Quintus,” he said with forced composure, “our time is too precious for such follies. It is not Caesar’s business, either to console Cinna or to offer him explanations. Remember that. And now leave us, lest the welfare of the commonwealth should suffer.” With these words he turned his back on Quintus.
Quintus was speechless; he angrily quitted the audience chamber, feeling as if every slave must read in his face how insultingly the emperor had treated him. Incapable from indignation, to judge accurately and fairly, he felt as a bitter disgrace, what was, in fact, the inevitable result of a false assumption. Standing apart as he did from the life of the court, and strongly influenced by his father’s views, he had always regarded Caesar in too favorable a light; still, he might have been shrewd and judicious enough, to have understood the folly and impossibility of his preposterous suggestion; he might have told himself that, even under the most favorable conditions, only those, who have sinned unintentionally, ever make advances towards reconciliation.
From the palace Quintus hastened on foot to his father’s residence, which lay at no great distance. He desired his clients and slaves to wait in the vestibule, and went first to the women’s large sitting-room, where he found his mother and the two girls, with Caius Aurelius in attendance. The Batavian was holding a book in his left hand, and with an awkward blush on his face was standing near the window, while the ladies leaned expectantly on their couches.
A shade of annoyance flitted across Claudia’s brow as her brother entered the room; the young Northman flushed a shade deeper, and dropped the hand which held the roll as he, not too warmly, returned his friend’s greeting.
“I am disturbing a recitation,” said Quintus apologetically.
“Oh! the day is before us!” cried Lucilia, and Octavia asked her son what had brought him so early to the house.
“Nothing of much importance,” said Quintus vaguely; “a request to my father. I am only waiting, till the atrium is perfectly clear. Pray go on reading, Aurelius. I will sit quite still in this corner and listen for a time. Meanwhile, will Lucilia fetch me a cup of mead[293]; my tongue is literally parched.”
“‘He spoke, and the dark-browed Kronion nodded assent![294]’” quoted Lucilia, going to a side door. “Baucis,” she called out, and gave her orders in a lower voice. Caius Aurelius, obeying Octavia’s glance of request, had already unrolled the book again, and he now began to read in a full and pleasant voice. In truth, the much-lauded Papius Statius might have been satisfied. He himself, a master in the art, could not have read his own poem better or more effectively. Quintus was astonished beyond words. What delightful tones, what various modulation, and above all what supreme intelligence of interpretation! and though Lucilia now and then struggled with a yawn, it was evidently from sheer physical fatigue, for it had been past midnight before she had gone to sleep.
When Aurelius had got to the end of the second canto of the poem, Quintus drank the remainder of his draught of mead and desired old Baucis to enquire in the atrium, whether Titus Claudius had not yet received the last of his morning visitors and, hearing that his father was alone, he took leave and hastened to the priest’s study. He found his father deep in work, even at his son’s greeting he only just raised his head.