“To Rome, madam! I do not advise that. The place is in commotion. There have been sad scenes of riot and pillage in the capital.”
“As the Gods love me! what care I so long as they do not invade the house in the Carinæ?”
“But there have been also massacres.”
“Well, when princes shift about, that is inevitable. They all do it. For my part, I rather like—that is, I don’t object to massacres in their proper places and confined to the proper persons.”
“Madam, you are secure where you are. Why, there was Galba,—he had not been in Rome seven months before he was killed, and he did not enter the city save over the bodies of seven thousand men, butchered on the Flaminian Way.”
“Well! I am not a man. Moreover, I thank the Gods, my house is not on the Flaminian Way, nor is it in the Velabrum, nor the Suburra, nor in the Forum Boarium either. We happen to live in the Carinæ, and I conceive that there have been no massacres and all that sort of thing there.”
“No, my dear lady, but when the entire city is disturbed——”
“And here, in Gabii, down to the lizards—dead asleep. Give me massacres rather than stagnation. I shall get back to Rome before the Ides of December, on account of my daughter’s health. By the way, will you believe it? She gave away the sword of my dear Corbulo to Lucius Lamia. Just conceive!—how effective that sword would be in my house—in the tablinum, the atrium, anywhere—and how I could point to it, and my feelings!—I can imagine nothing more striking. I have told Lamia to restore it. I would not lose it for a great deal. Well now, come. Any news from the capital?”
“Madam, you are aware that Galba fell, and that Otho threw himself on his sword after a reign of ninety days; and now the new Cæsar Vitellius is menaced. I hear that the East has risen, and that Vespasian has been proclaimed in Syria. The legions in Illyria have also declared for him and are marching into Italy. Egypt has pronounced against Vitellius, and it is but seven months since Otho died by his own hand.”
“Vespasian, did you say?” exclaimed the lady. “My good Senecio, he is a sort of cousin, a country cousin, just one of those cousins that can be cultivated into kinship, or dropped out of relationship as circumstances decide. His father was a pottering sort of a man, an auctioneer, and commissioner of drains and dirt and all that sort of thing. A worthy fellow, I dare say; I believe he had a statue erected to him somewhere because he did the scavengering so well. He married above his position, one Vespasia Polla; I have seen and heard of her, a round-faced woman like a pudding; he took her for her blood, but she was only a knight’s daughter; and those city knights, as the Gods love me! what a money-grubbing low set they are! His son, Flavius Vespasianus is proclaimed! It is really funny. It is, O Morals! I must laugh. Now, if my good man had but listened to me. But there, I shall become mad.—I don’t know how long it is since you have been pecking, or whether you eat all day long? But you have crumbs sticking in your beard. Another time be good enough to comb your beard before approaching me. Tell me, what has given Domitia the dumps?”