“Old Faustina still lives, then?” said the husband. “We have searched for her in cleft and morass. When she did not come back to us, I thought that she had met her death in these wretched mountains.”
“Don’t you remember,” the wife interposed, “that I would not believe that she was dead? Did I not say to you that she had gone back to the Emperor?”
This the husband admitted. “And I am glad,” he added, “that you were right, not only because Faustina has become rich enough to help us out of our poverty, but also on the poor Emperor’s account.”
The slave wanted to say farewell at once, in order to reach densely settled quarters before dark, but this the couple would not permit. “You must stop with us until morning,” said they. “We can not let you go before you have told us all that has happened to Faustina. Why has she returned to the Emperor? What was their meeting like? Are they glad to be together again?”
The slave yielded to these solicitations. He followed them into the hut, and during the evening meal he told them all about the Emperor’s illness and Faustina’s return.
When the slave had finished his narrative, he saw that both the man and the woman sat motionless—dumb with amazement. Their gaze was fixed on the ground, as though not to betray the emotion which affected them.
Finally the man looked up and said to his wife: “Don’t you believe God has decreed this?”
“Yes,” said the wife, “surely it was for this that our Lord sent us across the sea to this lonely hut. Surely this was His purpose when He sent the old woman to our door.”
As soon as the wife had spoken these words, the vine-dresser turned again to the slave.
“Friend!” he said to him, “you shall carry a message from me to Faustina. Tell her this word for word! Thus your friend the vineyard laborer from the Sabine mountains greets you. You have seen the young woman, my wife. Did she not appear fair to you, and blooming with health? And yet this young woman once suffered from the same disease which now has stricken Tiberius.”