Bissula! Plebeian her name may sound in the ears of aliens:
But to Ausonius it echoes with harmonies sweet and bewitching."
CHAPTER XXIV.
It is useless to conceal it from myself any longer, and what I admit to myself must also be confessed to you, my Paulus, my second self, at the same moment. Alas, I fear you read it long ago from these words in prose and verse.
I beseech you not to shake your cool, cautious head as usual over your "too youthful" Ausonius: I hope my heart will throb warmly till it ceases to beat.
I know all you will say--of course against it. For you would speak in favor only if you had seen her. Yet I rejoice that you are not here: I have no desire to be warned.
True, it is one thing to toy with the sweet illusion within my own breast and to the friend who will keep my secret; and quite another to transfer it to practical reality.
My thoughts are contradictory. I am fifty--ah no; fifty-two years old! But what happiness it will be for the young girl to share not only my wealth but the whole Latin civilization with me! She is a pagan. Pshaw! The baptismal water will no more wash away her charm than it has driven the pagan Muses from me. She can believe after baptism precisely what she believed before. And she shall offer sacrifices to golden Aphrodite and to Hymen!
I hesitate. She is very fond of me, but I often find her dreaming, gazing out with yearning eyes beyond the walls of the camp: strangely enough, it is not eastward in the direction of her home, but always toward the northwest. At that point the wall rises almost to the height of her huge pine tree, whose branches reach the ground: I again found her hidden among them yesterday. She climbs so far up among the boughs that she can look over the wall to the distant hills, and hides among the dense foliage like a martin.
I discovered her with much difficulty,--twilight was gathering,--and when at my call she slipped down I thought I saw tears in her eyes. But the crimson glow of sunset had probably dazzled me; I did not see them when she stood on the ground by my side, though she looked graver than usual.