"Agatha," said the lady, in a low, tender voice, the delicate Greek ring of which was full of persuasion, "look up, beloved child! Your brother and I, at least, are left. Think no more of the past. The gods have taken your father, after men had taken his and your inheritance. But our part in life is not yet over. Did not your parents too, in times past—did not we too, I say, lose ours? Did you not know you were probably to live longer than your poor father? Are you not to survive me also? Perhaps soon."
With a cry of dismay the young girl threw her arms round the lady's neck and sobbed. The other, while she shed tears, exclaimed:
"I thank that unknown power, of whom Dionysius the Athenian, my young countryman, so sublimely speaks, that the child weeps at last! Weep, Agatha, weep; but mourn not mute in the cowardice of despair! Mourn not for your father in a way unbecoming of his child and mine. Mourn not as though indeed you were not ours. My husband is gone for ever, but he went in honor. The courageless grief, that canker without voice or tears, which would slay his child, will not bring back to me the partner of my days, nor to you your father. We must not dishearten but cheer your brother Paulus for the battle which is before him."
"I wish to do so, my mother," said Agatha.
"When I recover my rights," broke in the youth at this point, "my father will come and sit among the lares, round the ever-burning fire in the atrium of our hereditary house, Agatha; and therefore courage! You are ill; but Charicles, the great physician of Tiberius Cæsar, is our countryman, and he will attend you. He can cure almost any thing, they say. And if you feel fatigued, no wonder, so help me! Minime mirum mehercle! Have we not travelled without intermission, by land and by sea, all the way from Thrace? But now, one more change of horses brings us to Formiæ, and then we shall be at our journey's end. Meantime, dear child, look up; see yonder woods, and the garden-like shore."
And having first tried in vain to brighten the horn window at the side of the vehicle, specular corneum, (glass was used only in the private carriages of the rich,) he stood up, and calling over the hide roof of the carriage, which was open in front—the horses being driven from behind—he ordered the rhedarius, or coachman, to open the panels. The man, evidently a former slave of the family, now their freedman, quickly obeyed, and descending from his bench, pushed back into grooves contrived to receive them the coarsely-figured and gaudily colored sides of the travelling carruca.
"Is parvula better?" he then cried, with the privileged freedom of an old and attached domestic, or of one who, in the far more endearing parlance of classic times, was a faithful familiaris—that is, a member of the family. "Is the little one better? The dust is laid now, little one; the evening comes; the light slants; the sun smiles not higher than yourself, instead of burning overhead. See, the beautiful country! See, the sweet land! Let the breeze bring a bloom to your cheeks, as it brings the perfumes to your mouth. Ah! the parvula smiles. Fate is not always angry!"
"Dear old Philip!" said the child; and then, turning to her mother, she added,
"Just now, mother, you waked me from a frightful dream. I thought that the man who has our father's estates was dead; but he came from the dead, and was trying to kill Paulus, my brother there; and for that purpose was striving to wrest the sword from Paulus's hand; and that the man, or lar, laughed in a hideous manner, and cried out, 'It is with his own sword we will slay him! Nothing but his own sword!'"
The old freedman turned pale, and muttered something to himself, as he stood by the side of the vehicle; and while he kept the horses steady, with the long reins in his left hand, glanced awfully toward Paulus.