Three hours after this the little gate creaked open, which led from the cavaedium to the street, and Quintus and the slave, both wrapped in thick cloaks, slowly mounted the Caelian Hill,[346] and then took a side road into the valley. Here, on the southern slope, the storm attacked them with redoubled fury; the blast howled up the Clivus Martis and the Appian Way. The streets were almost deserted; only a solitary travelling-chariot now and then rolled thundering and clattering over the stones.
“We must mend our pace,” whispered Quintus, as the slave paused a moment, fairly brought to a standstill at the corner of the Via Latina[347] by a sudden squall of rain. “We have still far to go, Blepyrus; and we shall have it worse still out there in the open.”
The road gradually trended off to the right; that dark mass, that now lay to the left, was the tomb of the Scipios,[348] and there, in front of them, hardly visible in the darkness of night, rose the arch of Drusus,[349] through which the road led them. They were now outside the limits of the city itself—the fourteen regions, as they were called, of Augustus Caesar. But Rome, the illimitable metropolis, flung out her arms far beyond these prescribed boundaries. That undulating plain, which we now know as the Campagna, was then dotted over with villas and pleasure-gardens. The main artery of this straggling suburb was the magnificent Via Appia—the noble work of a Claudius—leading to the south. The greater number of these villas were at this time abandoned, and the tombs that stood by the road-side[350] on either hand were hardly more silent, than the dwelling places of the living, before whom these stone witnesses were set to remind them, that life is fleeting and must be enjoyed to the full while it lasts.
Quintus and his companion went onwards, still to the southwards. The country-houses became more and more scattered; they might now have walked about two Roman miles beyond the arch of Drusus. A heavily-laden wagon, with an escort of riders, had just driven past them, and the gleam of the lanterns was dwindling in the distance. Quintus stopped in front of a high-vaulted family tomb, of which the façade was decorated with a semicircular niche containing a marble seat.
“If I am not mistaken in this Cimmerian blackness,” he muttered, “this is the spot....”
And at the same moment they heard, approaching from the opposite tomb, the sound of cautious steps.
A broad beam of light fell on the young man’s face.
“God be praised!” cried a woman’s voice; and in an instant Euterpe, darkening her lantern again, stood by the side of the two men. The young woman was trembling with wet and cold; her clothes clung to her limbs, and her hair hung in dark locks over her forehead and cheeks.
“Are you alone?” asked Quintus.
“With Thrax Barbatus. Here he comes.”