“See,” said he, “in the neighborhood of Præneste country people found a dead wolf whelp with two heads; and during a storm about that time lightning struck off an angle of the temple of Luna,—a thing unparalleled, because of the late autumn. A certain Cotta, too, who had told this, added, while telling it, that the priests of that temple prophesied the fall of the city or, at least, the ruin of a great house,—ruin to be averted only by uncommon sacrifices.”
Aulus, when he had heard the narrative, expressed the opinion that such signs should not be neglected; that the gods might be angered by an over-measure of wickedness. In this there was nothing wonderful; and in such an event expiatory sacrifices were perfectly in order.
“Thy house, Plautius, is not too large,” answered Petronius, “though a great man lives in it. Mine is indeed too large for such a wretched owner, though equally small. But if it is a question of the ruin of something as great, for example, as the domus transitoria, would it be worth while for us to bring offerings to avert that ruin?”
Plautius did not answer that question,—a carefulness which touched even Petronius somewhat, for, with all his inability to feel the difference between good and evil, he had never been an informer; and it was possible to talk with him in perfect safety. He changed the conversation again, therefore, and began to praise Plautius’s dwelling and the good taste which reigned in the house.
“It is an ancient seat,” said Plautius, “in which nothing has been changed since I inherited it.”
After the curtain was pushed aside which divided the atrium from the tablinum, the house was open from end to end, so that through the tablinum and the following peristyle and the hall lying beyond it which was called the oecus, the glance extended to the garden, which seemed from a distance like a bright image set in a dark frame. Joyous, childlike laughter came from it to the atrium.
“Oh, general!” said Petronius, “permit us to listen from near by to that glad laughter which is of a kind heard so rarely in these days.”
“Willingly,” answered Plautius, rising; “that is my little Aulus and Lygia, playing ball. But as to laughter, I think, Petronius, that our whole life is spent in it.”
“Life deserves laughter, hence people laugh at it,” answered Petronius, “but laughter here has another sound.”
“Petronius does not laugh for days in succession,” said Vinicius; “but then he laughs entire nights.”