Many a time was this ceremony performed in the twenty-four hours; for Valeria was a woman of noble rank, great possessions, and the highest fashion. Not a vanity of her sex, not a folly was there of her class, in which she scrupled to indulge; and then, as now, ladies were prone to rush into extremes, and frivolity, when it took the garb of a female, assumed preposterous dimensions, and a thirst for amusement, incompatible with reason or self-control.
There is always a certain hush, and, as it were, a pompous stillness, about the houses of the great, even long after inferior mortals are astir in pursuit of their pleasure or their business. To-day was Valeria’s birthday, and as such was duly observed by the hanging of garlands on the pillars of her porch; but after the completion of this graceful ceremony, silence seemed to have sunk once more upon the household, and the slave whose dream we have recorded, coming into her gates with an offering from his lord, and finding no domestics in the way, had sat him down to wait in the grateful shade, and, overcome with heat, might have slept on till noon had he not been roused by the grinding chariot-wheels, which mingled so confusedly with his dream.
It was no plebeian vehicle that now rolled into the colonnade, driven at a furious pace, and stopping so abruptly as to create considerable confusion and insubordination amongst the noble animals that drew it. The car, mounted on two wheels, was constructed of a highly-polished wood, cut from the wild fig-tree, elaborately inlaid with ivory and gold; the very spokes and felloes of the wheels were carved in patterns of vine-leaves and flowers, whilst the extremities of the pole, the axle, and the yoke, were wrought into exquisite representations of the wolf’s head, an animal, from historical reasons, ever dear to the fancy of the Roman. There was but one person besides the driver in the carriage, and so light a draught might indeed command any rate of speed, when whirled along by four such horses as now plunged and reared and bit each other’s crests in the portico of Valeria’s mansion. These were of a milky white, with dark muzzles, and a bluish tinge under the coat, denoting its soft texture, and the Eastern origin of the animals. Some[pg 8]what thick of neck and shoulders, with semicircular jowl, it was the broad and tapering head, the small quivering ear, the wide red nostril, that demonstrated the purity of their blood, and argued extraordinary powers of speed and endurance; while their short, round backs, prominent muscles, flat legs, and dainty feet, promised an amount of strength and activity only to be attained by the production of perfect symmetry. These beautiful animals were harnessed four abreast—the inner pair, somewhat in the fashion of our modern curricle, being yoked to the pole, of which the very fastening-pins were steel overlaid with gold, whilst the outer horses, drawing only from a trace attached respectively on the inner side of each to the axle of the chariot, were free to wheel their quarters outwards in every direction, and kick to their heart’s content—a liberty of which, in the present instance, they seemed well disposed to avail themselves.
The slave started to his feet as the nearest horse winced and swerved aside from his unexpected figure, snorting the while in mingled wantonness and fear. The axle grazed his tunic while it passed, and the driver, irritated at his horses’ unsteadiness, or perhaps in the mere insolence of a great man’s favourite, struck at him heavily with his whip as he went by. The Briton’s blood boiled at the indignity; but his sinewy arm was up like lightning to parry the blow, and as the lash curled round his wrist he drew the weapon quickly from the driver’s hand, and would have returned the insult with interest, had he not been deterred from his purpose by the youthful, effeminate appearance of the aggressor.
“I cannot strike a girl!” exclaimed the slave contemptuously, throwing the whip at the same time into the floor of the chariot, where it lit at the feet of the other occupant, a sumptuously-dressed nobleman, who enjoyed the discomfiture of his charioteer, with the loud frank glee of a master jeering a dependant.
“Well said, my hero!” laughed the patrician, adding in good-humoured, though haughty tones, “Not that I would give much for the chance of man or woman in a grasp like yours. By Jupiter! you’ve got the arms and shoulders of Antæus! Who owns you, my good fellow? and what do you here?”
“Nay, I would strike him again to some purpose if I were on the ground with him,” interrupted the charioteer, a handsome, petulant youth of some sixteen summers, whose long flowing curls and rich scarlet mantle denoted a pampered [pg 9]and favourite slave. “Gently, Scipio! So-ho, Jugurtha! The horses will fret for an hour now they have been scared by his ugly face.”
“Better let him alone, Automedon!” observed his master, again shaking his sides at the obvious discomfiture portrayed on the flushed face of his favourite. “Through your life keep clear of a man when he shuts his mouth like that, as you would of an ox with a wisp of hay on his horn. You silly boy! why he would swallow such a slender frame as yours at a gulp: and nobody but a fool ever strikes at a man unless he knows he can reach him, ay, and punish him too, without hurting his own knuckles in return! But what do you here, good fellow?” he repeated, addressing himself once more to the slave, who stood erect, scanning his questioner with a fearless, though respectful eye.
“My master is your friend,” was the outspoken answer. “You supped with him only the night before last. But a man need not be in the household of Licinius, not have spent his best years at Rome, to know the face of Julius Placidus, the tribune.”
A smile of gratified vanity stole over the patrician’s countenance while he listened; a smile that had the effect of imparting to its lineaments an expression at once mocking, crafty, and malicious. In repose, and such was its usual condition, the face was almost handsome, perfect in its regularity, and of a fixed, sedate composure which bordered on vacuity, but when disturbed, as it sometimes, though rarely, was, by a passing emotion, the smile that passed over it like a lurid gleam, became truly diabolical.