"Ah! but," cried Crispina, laughing with no less knowing a look, "that makes the hair yellow; and the brows of the knight are as black as the jet ornaments in your daughter's hair."
"You can tell us, no doubt," said Paulus, "who those ladies must be that came with Tiberius Cæsar yesterday from that splendid mansion on the Liris. They were in beautiful litters; one of sculptured bronze, the other of ivory, embossed with gold reliefs."
"I know who they are, of course," said the landlady; "they are half-sisters, the daughters of the late renowned warrior and statesman, the builder of the Pantheon, Agrippa Vipsanius, but by different mothers. One of them was the wife of Tiberius Cæsar."
"Was!" exclaimed Paulus; "why, she's not a ghost?"
"She is, nevertheless; her husband has another wife," said the landlady; adding, in a low voice, "a precious one, too; the emperor has required him to marry the august Julia."
"The august!" murmured Aglais contemptuously, with a shrug of the shoulders; "getting old, too."
"I am sure," resumed the landlady, "no one can describe the relationships of that family. Agrippa Vipsanius, you must know, married three times. His second wife was Marcella, daughter of Augustus's sister, Octavia; and this Marcella became the mother of the elder of the two ladies whom you saw. Well, while this Marcella was still living, but after she had had a daughter called Vipsania, Augustus made Agrippa put her away to marry, mind you, this very same august Julia, Augustus's own daughter, and therefore Marcella's first cousin. This Julia, who had just become a widow, having lost her first husband Marcellus, is the mother of the other lady whom you saw, who is called Julia Agrippina, and who thus came into the world the second cousin of her own half-sister. Well, Agrippa, the father of both girls, leaving the august Julia a widow for the second time, Tiberius Cæsar marries Agrippa's eldest daughter Vipsania, and has a son by her, called Drusus; and now, while Vipsania is still living, Augustus makes Tiberius put her away to marry the aforesaid august Julia, the mother of the younger daughter, Julia Agrippina, who is Tiberius's first and likewise second cousin."
"I can hardly follow you in the labyrinth," said Aglais.
"No one can, my lady, except those who make a study of it," said the landlady, laughing; "but it's all true. Julia, Augustus's daughter, is the wife of the father of both these girls, first cousin to the eldest of them, mother and cousin-in-law of the younger, and has now also been made wife to the husband of the elder, her own first cousin, and become the sister-in-law of her own daughter and cousin-in-law to the younger."
"Medius fidius!" cried Paulus, staring stupidly, "what a tremendous twisted knot! Julia's daughter, half-sister, and second cousin is put away, that the half-sister's husband may marry the half-sister's stepmother and second cousin, or something like that."