“And did you see more of Pedo?”
Blanda colored.
“Mistress, that was the beginning of our acquaintance. He was with a good master, Baudillas Macer, who, he said, would manumit him at any time. But, alas! what would that avail me? I remained in bondage. Ah, lady, Pedo regarded me with tenderness, and, indeed, I could have been happy with none other but him.”
“He is old and lame.”
“Ah, lady, I think the way he moves on his lame hip quite beautiful. I do not admire legs when one is of the same length as another—it gives a stiff uniformity not to my taste.”
“And he is old?”
“Ripe, lady—full ripe as a fig in August. Sour fruit are unpleasant to eat. Young men are prigs and think too much of themselves.”
“How long ago was it that this acquaintance began?”
“Five and twenty years. I trusted, when my master, Calvius Naso—he was so called because he really had a long nose, and my mistress was wont to [pg 250]tweak it—but there! I wander. I did think that he would have given me my freedom. In his illness I attended to him daily, nightly. I did not sleep, I was ever on the watch for him. As to my mistress, she was at her looking-glass, and using depilatory fluid on some hairs upon her chin, expecting shortly to be a widow. She did not concern herself about the master. He died, but left money only for the erection of a statue in the forum. Me he utterly forgot. Then my mistress sold me to the father of my present master. When he died also he manumitted eight slaves, but they were all men. His monument stands beside the road to Tolosa, with eight Phrygian caps sculptured on it, to represent the manumissions; but me—he forgot.”
“Then, for all these five and twenty years you have cared for Pedo and desired to be united to him!”