“I would forswear Nemausus—that he should exact such a price. Look at her face, Callipodius. Is it the sun that lightens it? By Hercules, I could swear that it streamed with effulgence from within—as though she were one of the gods.”
“The more beautiful and innocent she be, the more grateful is she to the august Archegos!”
“Pshaw!” scoffed the young man; his hand clutched the marble balustrade convulsively, and the blood suffused his brow and cheeks and throat. “I believe naught concerning these deities. My father was a shrewd man, and he ever said that the ignorant people created their own gods out of heroes, or the things of Nature, which they understood not, being beasts.”
“But tell me, Æmilius—and thou art a profundity of wisdom, unsounded as is this spring—what is this Nemausus?”
“The fountain.”
“And how comes the fountain to ever heave with water, and never to fail. Verily it lives. See—it is as a thing that hath life and movement. If not a deity, then what is it?”
“Nay—I cannot say. But it is subject to destiny.”
“In what way?”
“Ruled to flow.”
“But who imposed the rule?”