At the same time the slave turned toward Faustina, but he shrank back, aghast! and could not speak another word.
He did not behold the proud matron who had looked so strong that one might have expected that she would live to the age of a sibyl. In this moment, she had drooped into impotent age, and the slave saw before him a bent old woman with misty eyes and fumbling hands.
Faustina had certainly heard that the Emperor was terribly changed, yet never for a moment had she ceased to think of him as the strong man he was when she last saw him. She had also heard some one say that this illness progressed slowly, and that it took years to transform a human being. But here it had advanced with such virulence that it had made the Emperor unrecognizable in just two months.
She tottered up to the Emperor. She could not speak, but stood silent beside him, and wept.
“Are you come now, Faustina?” he said, without opening his eyes. “I lay and fancied that you stood here and wept over me. I dare not look up for fear I will find that it was only an illusion.”
Then the old woman sat down beside him. She raised his head and placed it on her knee.
But Tiberius lay still, without looking at her. A sense of sweet repose enfolded him, and the next moment he sank into a peaceful slumber.
V
A few weeks later, one of the Emperor’s slaves came to the lonely hut in the Sabine mountains. It drew on toward evening, and the vine-dresser and his wife stood in the doorway and saw the sun set in the distant west. The slave turned out of the path, and came up and greeted them. Thereupon he took a heavy purse, which he carried in his girdle, and laid it in the husband’s hand.
“This, Faustina, the old woman to whom you have shown compassion, sends you,” said the slave. “She begs that with this money you will purchase a vineyard of your own, and build you a house that does not lie as high in the air as the eagles’ nests.”