"Flight!" cried Paulus; "you fly?"
"Ah!" said Dionysius; "you know not all that I mean. You and I have been differently reared, yet in the same spirit. However, as you said, when at the risk of your own life you stood between oppression and an innocent young couple, the great Being whom we both expect will be pleased with a willing effort after what is right.
"But here we are at the gates of Formiæ. How the palace of the Mamurras glitters! How these narrow streets flare with torches! We must go at a walk. Charioteer, let the litters pass first. Yes, my friend, in the painful position in which I shall be forced to stand to-night, (and I blush beforehand, knowing my incompetence, my ignorance, and the intrinsic difficulty of what I am expected to do,) your future fortunes and the rights of your family are by a strange caprice made dependent upon the success with which I may be able to defend ideas of general and unchangeable value, beauty, and truth; ideas which it debases a man not to have, and exalts him to entertain; ideas which were always dear to the greatest minds that have preceded us, and which are reflected in every calm and pure soul, as the stars in fair, sweet lakes, although the putrid, slimy pool, and the waters tossed with storms, and an atmosphere darkened with clouds, may forbid the image, by intercepting the heavenly light or defacing the earthly mirror."
While Dionysius thus informed Paulus of the singular and close connection which had arisen between the future prospects of his mother, his sister, and himself, as well as the establishment of their rights, and the success with which Dionysius might this night be able to make good his philosophical doctrines against the wits, the orators, and the sophists of the Augustan court, at the same moment Tiberius was conversing upon the same subject with Domitius Afer and Antistius Labio in a room of the Mamurran palace.
"Just," said he, in continuation of a conversation previously commenced, "as if a person's claim to an estate could be rendered either better or worse by the style of his horsemanship!"
Here Domitius Afer laughed heartily, and showed his admiration of Cæsar's wit. Labio, a saturnine, laborious man, son of one of the assassins of Julius Cæsar, and author of numberless works, preserved a grim, unsmiling air, as he observed,
"A man may ride over an estate, and over all its hedges and ditches; but he must be no bad rider if he can jump his horse into a title to become its proprietor."
"Nevertheless, the infatuation of Augustus for the Greek friend of the claimant is such that if the Athenian acquits himself successfully to-night in the Mæcenas-like criticisms and Plato-like discussions which are, I suspect, to vary our entertainments, he will next suffer the golden-tongued youth to state the case of Paulus Lepidus Æmilius. The effect at which you must aim is to make a fool of the Athenian; and you are the men to do it. Refute every thing he says, ridicule him, cover him with confusion; make him the gibe of the whole court, the derision of the brilliant circle assembling here to-night. Put an end to his influence. We want no more mind-battles in Italy. I set dogs upon a dog. Arouse all your attention. Bend all your energies. Let the stranger retire from among us in disgrace."
That night, the most brilliant company which could then be culled out of the human race was assembled in the central impluvium of the Mamurran palace and its arcades. Lamps, hanging from the festoons of creeping plants which adorned and connected the porphyry pillars of the colonnades, mingled their gleam with the light of the moon and stars. The variety of rays, of shadows, and of coloring which were thus sprinkled over the flowers, the leaves, the walls and pillars, the faces, figures, and dresses, produced a scene which a painter could better render than words can. The central fountain was smitten into a sorcery of tints, as it shed into a large basin of green marble the drooping sheaf of waters, of which the materials were perpetually changing, and the form and outlines perfectly maintained, or instantly and perpetually renewed.
The Emperor, and the Cæsars, Tiberius and Germanicus, with the famous authors we have already more than once mentioned, Livy, and Lucius Varius, and Velleius Paterculus were present. Ælius Sejanus, the prefect of the Prætorians; Cneius Piso, the gambler; Plancina, his rich wife; Lucius Piso, his brother, governor of Rome; with many persons who then sparkled in the court orbits, but whose names have perished out of human memory; and Julia, the emperor's daughter, Tiberius's new wife; and Agrippina Vipsania, lately his wife; and Agrippina Julia, daughter of the former, sister of the latter, wife of Germanicus, and mother of Caligula; and Livia, the aged wife of Augustus himself, all appeared among the guests. Chairs and couches had been placed here and there. Augustus and the ladies we have mentioned were seated, some just within, others just without one of the arcades, between two of its columns, so that the moonlight fell upon some heads, the lamplight upon others; and a wayward, dubious mixture of both upon the golden tresses of Agrippina Julia, and of a beautiful young girl near her, on whom Domitius Afer, the celebrated orator, was gazing with admiration. But she, when she at last observed his glance, fixed upon him such a look of combined scorn and amazement that the advocate winced and became livid. She was destined, one day, to be the subject of his fatal eloquence, and to appease by nothing less than her execution the vindictive vanity of the orator, because she had spurned the ambitious love of the man.