He looked at her with surprise, then, remembering that girls have strange fancies, he was silent, and guided her safely out into the blazing sunshine. The sun was still an hour above the horizon; the pine-trees on the Palatine Hills, where Caesar's palaces were, stood up like giant sentinels against a sky of limpid blue.
Aurelius Lucanus led the way through the Forum, where his wife, an ardent worshipper of the gods, stopped to lay a bunch of roses on the base of a large statue of Ceres, standing near the Temple and a building dedicated to the use of the Vestal Virgins.
The Chief Virgin was being carried to the entrance in her chair, borne by four bearers, while in front of her walked the two men who held high the symbols of her priestly office. Claudia fell upon her knees as the holy vestal went by, until her chair had been carried through the iron gates.
Virgilia watched her mother, with an anxious look on her young face.
"Why didst thou not also kneel before the holy one?" her mother said, in a stern tone. "Dost not know that in her hands she holds such power that even the emperor himself trembles before her and does her bidding, lest the gods send upon him disaster and ruin?"
Virgilia made no reply, but walked quietly by her mother's side through the Forum, beneath the great arches, up over the Capitoline Hill where Jupiter's Temple arose in grandeur, its ivory-tinted marbles beginning to turn a dull rose in the rays of the fast-lowering sun.
They descended on the other side and entered a labyrinth of narrow streets, winding in and out between rows of houses, most of them showing a plain, windowless front, the only decoration being over and around the door.
With a quick double-knock at one of these doors, the lawyer summoned a servant, who bowed deeply as the two ladies and his master entered.
Aurelius Lucanus lingered a moment, while his wife passed on into the atrium, but here, it was hot, so she went further, into a court, transformed into a beautiful garden. Around the fountain, which cooled the air, bloomed literally hundreds of calla lilies, masses of stately blossoms with snowy chalices and hearts of gold. Around the pillars twined the June roses, pink and yellow, and mixed with them were vines, of starry jessamine, shedding forth a faint, delicious odor, akin to that of orange-blossoms.
Here were chairs of rare woods inlaid with ivory, and couches, gracefully formed, covered with soft silks and cushions embroidered in gold.