“My nobility is of no account with me now.”
“You think so, and so it may be whilst untouched, but I am certain the least ruffle would make your pride flash out.”
Domitia remembered her resentment at the physician’s apparent familiarity.
“Well—my beauty will be disguised.”
“That nothing can conceal.”
“Oh! do not speak thus, or I shall mistrust you, as I mistrust every one else—except my slave Euphrosyne, and Eboracus, and Glyceria the actor’s wife. These seem to me the only true persons in the world. I would cast myself on them, but two are slaves and the other is paralyzed. Consider now, Cornelia, do you not understand how that one may reach a condition of mind or soul, call it which you will, when we become desperate. One must make an effort to break away into a new and free and better life, or succumb and become bad, and dead to all that is noble and true and good, hard of heart, callous to right and wrong. I am at that point. I know, if I were to return to him, and to be Empress of the Roman world, that I should have but one thing to live for—the pride of my place and the blazoning of my position; and to all that which lies deep within me, bleeding, crying out, hungering, and with dry lips—dead.”
“My dear lady, you were never made for what you are forced to become.”
“Then, why do the Gods thrust me on to a throne that I hate, tie me to a man that I loathe, surround me with a splendor that I despise. Tell me why? O Vesta! immaculate Goddess! how I would that I had been as one of thy consecrated virgins, to spend my days in this sweet house, and pure, peaceful cloister! Do you see? I must away. I am lost to all good—if I remain. I must away! it is my soul that speaks, that spreads its hands to thee, Cornelia! save me!”
She threw herself on her knees and extended her arms to the Vestal Abbess, caught her dress and kissed it.
Cornelia was deeply moved,