Next morning, before the family were out of their beds, Phylis the slave had returned from Monte Circello with the following note:
"Marcus Lepidus Æmilius hails the widow of his brave and valiant brother. Come with your children. The last of mine has, alas! died under the clemency of one man, and the liberality of another. The clement man is Augustus, the liberal man was Mæcenas. All that I now retain is yours; and yours shall be all I may be able to leave. Farewell."
But despite of this note, Paulus could not persuade his mother to depart from that neighborhood till after the trifling display of horsemanship, as he called it, which he had to afford for the amusement of the Roman world on the evening of the third day ensuing. A little ruffled at his failure to persuade the Lady Aglais to go away, he summoned their freedman Philip, and with him for a companion started on foot for Formiæ before noon, along a road as thronged at that moment and as animated as the road to Epsom is the eve of what Lord Palmerston has rather affectedly, and, as applied to an annual event, very incorrectly, called the Isthmian games of England.
Scarcely had he and Philip entered the southern gate, when they noticed a little crowd around some nurses, one of whom, apparently a Nubian, held the hand of a magnificently-attired child of any age between five and eight. At his side was an eastern-looking youth of about eighteen, whom the reader has met before. Thellus the gladiator was standing with folded arms on the outskirts of the suddenly-collected concourse. The child had dropped some toy, which a dog had seized in his mouth, and had thereby defaced. The dog was now a prisoner, held fast by the throat in a slave's hands.
"The poor dog knew not what he was doing," said the nurse.
"I care nothing for that," cried the child, who was purple with passion. "Strangle him, Lygdus."
And accordingly Lygdus tightened his grasp of the dog's throat till the animal's tongue was thrust forth; the grasp was yet longer maintained, and the dog was throttled dead.
"Is it dead?" screamed the child.
"Quite; see," replied Lygdus, casting away upon the street the breathless carcass.