“Then I will to Gabii,” said Domitia with a sigh. “If he will force me back—there is the lake.”
Then, said Cornelia, “Dost thou know that blind-man Messalinus?”
“Full well—he hangs on to the Cæsar Domitian, like a leech.”
“Since thou didst enter the house of us Vestals, he hath been up and down the Via Nova and the Sacred Way, never letting this place out of his eye—blind though he be. Some say he scents as doth a dog, and that is why he works his head about from side to side snuffing the wind. When I went forth he detached two of his slaves to follow—and they went as far as myself and stood watching outside the door of the knight Celer, and when I came forth they were still there, and when I returned to the Atrium of Vesta, I found Messalinus peering with his sightless eyes round the corner. But, I trow, he sees through his servants’ eyes.”
“He is a bird of ill omen,” said Domitia, “a vulture scenting his prey.”
CHAPTER VI.
FOR THE PEOPLE.
Domitia was at Gabii. Cornelia, the Vestal Great Mother had sent her thither in her own litter, and attended by her own servants, but with the assistance of the knight Celer, who had gone before to Gabii to make preparations.
Gabii had none of the natural beauties of Albanum, but Domitia cared little for that. It was a seat that had belonged to her father and here his ashes reposed. The villa was by no means splendid; but then—nor had been that of Albanum when she was first carried thither. Domitian had bought it immediately after the proclamation of his father, and it had then been a modest, but very charming country residence. Since then, he had lavished vast sums upon it, and had converted it into a palace, without having really improved it thereby. To Albanum he had become greatly attached; to it he retired in his moody fits, when resentful of his treatment by his father, envious of his brother, and suspicious of his first cousin Sabinus. There he had vented his spleen in harassing his masons, bullying his slaves, and in sticking pins through flies.