CHAPTER IV.
Next morning Quintus was up long before the sun, while in the atrium the slaves were still busy cleaning the walls and the mosaic pavement, so he lingered for a while in the peristyle. His eye dreamily watched the soft swaying of the trees in melancholy relief against the blue-green sky; light fleecy clouds floated in the transparent air, and here and there above his head a star still twinkled fitfully. Quintus sat on a bench with his head thrown back, for he was tired and over-excited; an unwonted restlessness had brought him out of bed. How calm and pure was this early gloaming! In Rome, so thought Quintus, there was something uncanny and dreary in the early morning—the grey of dawn came as the closing effect of a wild night of revelry. Here, on the hills of Baiae, the stars winked like kindly eyes and the twilight soothed the spirit! And yet, no; for here too was the great capital; here too were storms and unrest. Rome, that monstrous polypus, stretched its greedy arms out to the uttermost ends of the world, and even into the calmest and most peaceful solitudes. Even here, by the sea, wantonness had spread its glittering snares; here too duty and truth were forsworn, and intrigue and inhumanity held their orgies. Quintus thought of the tortured slave.... That pale and pain-stricken face had sunk deep into his soul; strangely enough! for his eye had long been accustomed to such sights of anguish and horror. The bloody contests of gladiators had never roused him to any other interest than that in a public entertainment. But this particular picture forced itself on his memory, though—from the point of view of any Roman of distinction—it had no interesting features whatever, for of what account in the Roman Empire was a slave? And especially in the sight of Quintus, rich, handsome and brilliant? It was in short most strange—but that white, bearded face, with its lofty, unflinching expression never faded from his memory, and his inward eye found it impossible not to gaze upon it. Then, suddenly another figure stood side by side with it: The white-armed Cypris Domitia, the passion-stirred Empress. Here were pain, misery, silent abnegation—there were feverish desires and passions, reckless, greedy, all-absorbing selfishness.... By the gods—there they stood before him—the slave and the imperial woman—both so distinct that he could have touched them as it seemed.—The slave had broken his bonds and put out his hand with a smile of beatitude, while the woman shrank away and her white arms writhed like snakes of marble. She threw herself on the earth, and her fair gold hair fell loose over the bleeding feet of the slave....
Quintus started up, the murmur of the fountain had lulled him to sleep, and now, as he rubbed his hand across his eyes, a woman’s figure was in fact before him, not so stately and tall as the moonlighted Domitia, but as fresh and sweet as a rose.
“Lucilia! Up so early?”
“I could not sleep and stole away softly from Claudia’s side. She is still asleep, for she came to bed very late. But you, my respected friend—what has brought you out before daybreak? You, the latest sleeper of all the sons of Rome?”
“I was just like you. I think the strong liquor we drank at supper last night....”
“A vain excuse,” said Lucilia. “When ever did good wine rob you of a night’s rest? Sooner could I believe that you were thinking of Cornelia!”
“What should make you think that?”
“Well, it is a natural inference. For what else are you her betrothed? To be sure you do not play the part with much zeal.”
“How so?”