“At the end of last month,” Lucius Rutilius began, “Hero had firmly resolved to unite her life with mine. I made her acquaintance at Tibur, where her father had purchased Junius’ Gellius’ villa—it adjoins my own, you know—after the death of its first owner. Wandering through the park, I saw the bewitching girlish figure on the opposite side of the wall that divides Gellius’ grounds from mine. Hero was standing in the shade of a laurel-bush, her fair hair adorned simply with a rose, scattering with her dainty little hands crumbs or corn, which she held gathered in her robe, to a fluttering cloud of sparrows. Concealed behind the pedestal of a goddess of autumn, I could watch her quietly without having my presence suspected.
“Ah, my dear Caius, I should vainly try to describe the subtle charm, childlike innocence, and enchanting grace revealed to me in that quarter of an hour! How she chatted with her protégés, repelled the bold and encouraged the timid ones, how she jested and laughed, how her loose tunic slipped from her snowy shoulder—it was bewitching! In short, those fifteen minutes decided my fate. For the first time during a life of twenty-six years I experienced at the sight of a girl who charmed me a feeling of sacred reserve, a sort of reverence that made any wanton thought seem a crime. In my ardent dreams, which instantly twined with eager longing around this lovely apparition, I saw her only as the presiding mistress of my house, the ruler of my life....”
“It really appears to be a serious matter,” murmured Caius Bononius. “Does the night-breeze rustling through the boughs deceive me, or what is it that makes your voice tremble so?”
“Do not doubt!” replied Rutilius. “What I feel for Hero is sacred enough to fill my heart with the emotions that seize devout worshippers at the presence of the goddess. Now hear the rest. Wholly absorbed by one thought, I returned to the house and pondered in solitude over the problem how I might succeed in reaching the desired goal. Usually—as you know—I was not embarrassed when in the society of beautiful girls and women; but here the often-tested art of crafty plans seemed to leave me in the lurch. After twenty absurdly tasteless ideas I resolved to ask Agathon—who also lived at Tibur—to take me with him as an uninvited guest to the next banquet given by her father, Heliodorus. A pretended desire to talk with him about the sale of a small grove would serve for an excuse. Agathon cast a strange glance at me when I informed him of my wish. Perhaps this sort of introduction was not the best, though I thought it so; for you, too, will some day learn, spite of all the wisdom that now fills your soul, that love makes even the most experienced people unskilful.”
“On the contrary,” replied Bononius, “I believe great passions render us inventive.”
“We won’t argue the point. Inventive perhaps in what is decisive, but foolish in every other respect.—Agathon consented, and on the third day the opportunity offered. Heliodorus received me with the manners of a polished man of the world, greeting me as a neighbor whose acquaintance he had long desired to make. As to the grove, about which I incoherently stammered a few words, he would consider the matter, and if he could really oblige me, would willingly make a sacrifice.
“The banquet passed without my even obtaining a glimpse of the object of my ardent longing; yet I might well be satisfied. From this hour the wall between our two estates was as it were demolished; an intercourse began, which after a short time developed into friendly relations, and now of course Hero, who had retired from the sight of the guests at the noisy drinking-bout, was visible at any hour of the day to the neighbor who came as it were clad in a tunic,[1] to see her father.
“Let me say nothing about how it all happened. A hundred details gradually wove the certainty that the worthy Sicilian’s daughter favored me, and one evening in the park, on the very spot under the laurel-bush where I had first beheld her, I kissed the words of consent from her quivering lips.
“Those were happy days, Bononius! We still kept our love concealed; not that we had reason to doubt her father’s consent, but there was an indescribable charm in this mystery; I might say: we feared to profane our happiness, if we should draw aside the veil too soon. True, our relations did not wholly escape the excellent Heliodorus’ notice. More than once, while wandering by Hero’s side through the colonnades of the peristyle, I met his sympathizing smile, which seemed to say: ‘Friend, I see through you, but am not angered by your secret suit.’
“Then one evening—we had formed the resolution the day before to appear on the following Friday, October 1st, Heliodorus’ birthday, hand in hand before him and reveal everything—Hero received me with an agitated expression that greatly alarmed me. Her father had gone to Rome on business and was not expected to return till late. Hero had been alone all day with Lydia, a young relative with whom she was educated, had refused old Septimia, her grey-haired confidante, admission to her apartments, neglected to eat, and did not dress until the hour I usually came, when she waited for me on the stone bench under the colonnade of the peristyle. Lydia—a charming creature, by the way, only she reminds one a little too much of our highly-painted fashionable ladies to compare with Hero’s divine simplicity—was sitting beside her when I entered. My sweet, sorrowful love was holding a triangular paper in her hand; Lydia, frowning, clenched in her dainty fist a parchment covered with red letters. After long questioning I learned the following details.