“I am an intruder,” said the young man, “yet I would not sleep the night in this house without paying my respects to the mother of my kind hostess. Alas! thou art one I learn who is unable to escape that which befalls all mortals. It is a lot evaded only by the gods, if there be any truth in the tales told concerning them. It must be a satisfaction to you to contemplate the many pleasures enjoyed in a long life, just as after an excellent meal we can in mind revert to it and retaste in imagination every course—as indeed I do with the supper so daintily furnished by my hostess.”
“Ah, sir,” said the old woman, “on the couch of death one looks not back but forward.”
“And that also is true,” remarked Æmilius. “What is before you but everything that can console the mind and gratify the ambition. With your excellent daughter and the timber-yard hard by, you may calculate on a really handsome funeral pyre—plenty of olive wood and fragrant pine logs from the Cebennæ. I myself will be glad to contribute a handful of oriental spices to throw into the flames.”
“Sir, I think not of that.”
“And the numbers who will attend and the orations that will be made lauding your many virtues! It has struck me that one thing only is wanting in a funeral to make it perfectly satisfactory, and that is that the person consigned to the flames should be able to see the pomp and hear the good things said of him.”
“Oh, sir, I regard not that!”
“No, like a wise woman, you look beyond.”
“Aye! aye!” she folded her hands and a light came into her eyes. “I look beyond.”
“To the mausoleum and the cenotaph. Unquestionably the worthy Flavillus will give you a monument as handsome as his means will permit, and for many centuries your name will be memorialized thereon.”
“Oh, sir! my poor name! what care I for that? I ask Flavillus to spend no money over my remains; and may my name be enshrined in the heart of my daughter. But—it is written elsewhere—even in Heaven.”