“How is that maiden too narrow in the hips, with whom thou wert in love,” asked he after a while, “and whom I took from Aulus for thee?”
Vinicius was confused, but Petronius came to his aid at that moment. “I will lay a wager, lord,” said he, “that he has forgotten. Dost thou see his confusion? Ask him how many of them there were since that time, and I will not give assurance of his power to answer. The Vinicius are good soldiers, but still better gamecocks. They need whole flocks. Punish him for that, lord, by not inviting him to the feast which Tigellinus promises to arrange in thy honor on the pond of Agrippa.”
“I will not do that. I trust, Tigellinus, that flocks of beauty will not be lacking there.”
“Could the Graces be absent where Amor will be present?” answered Tigellinus.
“Weariness tortures me,” said Nero. “I have remained in Rome at the will of the goddess, but I cannot endure the city. I will go to Antium. I am stifled in these narrow streets, amid these tumble-down houses, amid these alleys. Foul air flies even here to my house and my gardens. Oh, if an earthquake would destroy Rome, if some angry god would level it to the earth! I would show how a city should be built, which is the head of the world and my capital.”
“Cæsar,” answered Tigellinus, “thou sayest, ‘If some angry god would destroy the city,’—is it so?”
“It is! What then?”
“But art thou not a god?”
Nero waved his hand with an expression of weariness, and said,—“We shall see thy work on the pond of Agrippa. Afterward I go to Antium. Ye are all little, hence do not understand that I need immense things.”
Then he closed his eyes, giving to understand in that way that he needed rest. In fact, the Augustians were beginning to depart. Petronius went out with Vinicius, and said to him,—“Thou art invited, then, to share in the amusement. Bronzebeard has renounced the journey, but he will be madder than ever; he has fixed himself in the city as in his own house. Try thou, too, to find in these madnesses amusement and forgetfulness. Well! we have conquered the world, and have a right to amuse ourselves. Thou, Marcus, art a very comely fellow, and to that I ascribe in part the weakness which I have for thee. By the Ephesian Diana! if thou couldst see thy joined brows, and thy face in which the ancient blood of the Quirites is evident! Others near thee looked like freedmen. True! were it not for that mad religion, Lygia would be in thy house to-day. Attempt once more to prove to me that they are not enemies of life and mankind. They have acted well toward thee, hence thou mayst be grateful to them; but in thy place I should detest that religion, and seek pleasure where I could find it. Thou art a comely fellow, I repeat, and Rome is swarming with divorced women.”