It was still early, but two hours after sunrise, and Octavia was sitting in silent abstraction with her two daughters, in the snug little room where—so short a time since—Caius Aurelius had read to them the Thebais of Statius. Cornelia, too, was with them; she was sitting pale and listless near the door, and listening for a step in the hall. She was waiting till the high-priest should come in from attending Caesar’s levée and presenting a petition to him. Since the day when Quintus had been taken back to the Tullianum, Cornelia had never ceased to implore to be admitted to the dungeon, where she thought she could bend her lover’s obduracy; for she was convinced that nothing but a proud spirit of defiance had prompted his retractation at the last moment.
“You do not know how to coax and entreat him,” she had said to the high-priest. “Your very requests sound like commands, and leave a sting in his wounded pride. But I am a woman, his betrothed; I love him, and I will implore him! His heart will soften, as soon as he hears my voice.”
She had thus persuaded Titus Claudius, who, though he felt that Cornelia did not fully understand his son’s character, thought he ought not to neglect this last possibility. But unluckily he met with unexpected hindrances. The governor of the prison, supported by higher authority, positively refused her admission, and the priest’s declaration that he would take all the responsibility on his own shoulders, produced no effect whatever.
Titus Claudius applied to the city-prefect, but a long discussion only led to the same result. Some one, it was evident, must have an interest in the complete isolation of the illustrious prisoner, and that some one must be of exalted rank. A visit to Clodianus was equally unsuccessful. Indeed, the adjutant displayed a rough and uncompromising severity, which was startling in a man who was not wont to deal thus with persons of position and influence, and the Flamen quitted him in high wrath. The meeting seemed to have resulted in a lasting coolness, not to say hostility, between the two officials. But this step, too, on the adjutant’s part was the result of calculation. If Caesar should hear of the matter—and he was certain to hear of it, for there were witnesses present—he could no longer doubt the devotion of his faithful Clodianus. He, at least, was a true and trustworthy servant, who would rather make an enemy of the powerful high-priest, than abridge by one iota the laws and interests of the State, which in the present instance were so surprisingly identical with the private interests of Caesar himself.
On leaving Clodianus, Titus Claudius betook himself to the chamberlain Parthenius. Still the same refusal, though wrapped here in the utmost politeness and reverence—but it could not be, it was simply impossible. If in anything else Parthenius could oblige his illustrious friend, he would devote himself to the cause with all the indefatigable zeal he had before now displayed in the service of a man so highly venerated, world-renowned and distinguished.
After two or three more attempts to interest influential personages in the matter, the high-priest resolved on laying his request before Caesar himself, though it went hard with him to appear as a petitioner in his own behalf. And now, for the past half-hour he had been waiting at the palace.
The family, and particularly Cornelia, awaited his return with eager anxiety, and at every step on the pavement the excited girl started and shivered. Her hands clutched the arms of her seat; her breath came quickly, and her face was as white as marble. If this last chance failed! Alas, and Cornelia had only too much reason to regard failure as certain! Domitian, that incarnation of hatred and revenge—it was too much to hope for! Domitian, whom she had scorned and humiliated, as a queen might treat a slave—was it likely that he would allow her to save the man she loved? And yet, if anyone could wring this permission from the tyrant by the mere weight of personal influence, it was the Flamen.
The minutes went by—a quarter of an hour—half an hour. Hardly a word was spoken. Claudia held a book and tried to read, but could not get beyond the first three lines. Lucilia sat gazing at the floor and gave herself up to sad fancies; that delightful day at Ostia now and then rose before her memory—what a difference the little time that since elapsed had wrought in three happy young creatures! Cornelia’s lover in a dungeon, Claudia’s under sentence as a traitor, self-banished and far away, never to return perhaps—while she, Lucilia—she, to be sure, had no lover, no friend, no one to care for her—but she felt for all that concerned Cornelia and Claudia, and she herself had been happy too in that peaceful country home, oh so happy! That good old Fabulla, how kind she had been, how anxious to please her guests, how full of sympathy were her clear honest eyes. And those eyes were now perhaps not less tearful than Claudia’s—who so often wept at night when she thought Lucilia was asleep—for her only son Cneius Afranius was one of the fugitives too. How sad for her to miss the accustomed greeting and kiss, never to hear that honest manly voice. Yes, sad indeed—everything was sad—poor unfortunate mother!
Lucilia was wiping away a tear, that had fallen unbidden down her own cheek when, with a loud cry, she started from her seat.
There in the door-way stood, in the flesh, the very subject of her compassion. Fabulla, announced by Baucis, had come in, and, with a thousand assurances of her dutiful respect, begged to be forgiven her venturing to intrude her presence on the illustrious family of the high-priest. But for ten days she had had no news of her son, her letters had remained unanswered; a messenger she had sent to his residence had found the house locked up. So, in her despair, she had come herself to Rome, and as she did not know another living soul in the city, she had thought of the noble young men and ladies, who had done her the honor of visiting her at Ostia.