"No riddle to me," Flexinna declared. "It's as c-c-clear as d-d-daylight."

"If you are so sure," said Brinnaria, "explain. I have no guess even."

"Why," expounded Flexinna, "he was there to c-c-collect evidence against you. He hates you because you wouldn't marry him and he is t-t-tenaciously resolved to be revenged. He is on the lookout for anything that might d-d-discredit you. He hoped to spy on an interview b-b-between you and Almo, for he surmised that you would arrange to have Almo meet you in the empty house!"

"The nasty beast!" cried Brinnaria, shocked. "How dare he?"

"Oh, b-b-be sensible," Flexinna admonished her. "You know the k-k-kind he is. He's b-b-bound to impute to everybody what he would d-d-do in their p-p-place. Any man under the same circumstances would jump at the same suspicions."

"But why?" queried Brinnaria, bewildered and angry.

"Think a minute," said Flexinna. "To suspect all women is a c-c-convention, almost an axiom, with most men. All men like C-C-Calvaster assume that every married woman is interested in some man b-b-besides her husband, or in almost any man, and if married women are under suspicion, on the assumption that one husband is not enough, of c-c-course you Vestals, who haven't even a husband, are doubly under suspicion."

"Bah!" snarled Brinnaria, "you make me cross!"

"Facts are facts," Flexinna summed up.

Brinnaria did not retort. She had climbed out of the tank and was seated on the edge, the drops streaming off her in rivulets, watching the ripples her toes' made in the water.

"Facts are facts," she echoed, "and conjectures are merely conjectures; what is more, conjectures ought to have some basis in fact. You assert, as if you know it to he true, that Calvaster expected Almo to meet me to-day. But Almo is at Falerii."

"No, he's not," Flexinna retorted; "he's b-b-been in t-t-town t-t-ten d-d-days and has had the old house on the C-C-Carinae reopened. He's settling d-d-down to live in Rome."

Brinnaria flushed.

"I think," she said, scrambling to her feet, "that he might have had enough consideration for me to stay in the country."

"So d-d-do I," said Flexinna.



CHAPTER X - CONFERENCE



SOME months later, during one of the brief and infrequent breathing spells in his ten years' fight to beat off the raids of the Marcomanni and other Germanic tribes, Aurelius returned from the Rhine frontier to Rome. As soon as she was reasonably sure that the Emperor was rested from the fatigues of his journey and had disposed of the worst of his accumulated routine duties, Brinnaria sought a second audience with the chief of the nation.

She was then a tall, grave girl of nineteen, looking and behaving like a woman of twenty-five. Very handsome she was, full-fleshed without a trace of plumpness, fun breasted without a hint of overabundance. Her brown hair, now grown long again after its ceremonial shearing at her entrance into the order of Vestals, was so dark that it was almost black. Arranged in the six braids traditional for Vestals and wound round her head like a coronet it became her notably. Her complexion was creamy, with a splendid brilliant color that came and went in her cheeks. Her expression of face was an indescribable blend of kindliness and haughtiness towards others, of austerity and cheerfulness inwardly, of intellectuality and comprehension towards life at large. She had acquired the statuesqueness of the conventional Vestal attitudes and movements, but she sat and stood so that all beholders felt a vivid impression of her vitality, of reserve strength, incomparably beyond anything possessed by her five colleagues.

Her stately pacing as she walked always appeared the conscious restraint of what, of itself, would have been a swinging stride. She wore her clothes with an unanalyzable difference, with a sort of effrontery, as Calvaster put it in talking of her to his cronies.

On her way to the palace, erect in her white robe amid the gorgeous crimson hangings of her gilded state coach, she meditated on the great dissimilarity between the feelings with which she had gone to her first audience with the Emperor and those with which she now approached his abode. Then she had been palpitating with conscientious scruples and childish dreads, now she was sure of herself and of her errand; then she had thought chiefly of her mother and of the traditions of her family and clan, now not only her mother was dead, but the whole family of the Epulones had perished except herself and the Brinnarian clan was represented by but three families, her relationship to which was fainter than any assignable degree of cousinship; then she had been full of elation at her lofty position in the world, now she was perfectly at home in her environment and felt no emotion at the thought of it.

At the palace she found herself in the same vast room, alone with a somewhat older and graver Emperor, now sole ruler of their world since the death of his colleague, Lucius Verus. He greeted her kindly, with an air of effort to conceal his weariness, and when both were seated asked her errand.

"In the first place," she said, "I want you to tell me whether you are satisfied with the reports you have had of me."

Aurelius half smiled.

"I am well pleased in respect to all your actions but one," he said. "You have certainly done better than I expected or hoped. You have curbed your wild nature so well that, of late years, you have behaved altogether as a Vestal should. Even earlier your conduct was creditable, since from the very day of your promise to me, your outbursts were less and less frequent and also less and less violent. Once only have you acted so that I felt displeased when I heard what you had done and feel somewhat displeased even yet."

"I suppose," Brinnaria ruminated, "you mean my larruping Bambilio."

"Yes," Aurelius admitted. "That was in a sense unforgivable. Had I been in Rome at the time I must have animadverted upon it with the greatest severity."

"If you had been in Rome at the time," spoke Brinnaria boldly, "I should not have been flogged by any mere deputy Pontifex of Vesta. It would have been incumbent upon you, as Pontifex Maximus, yourself to give me my ceremonial scourging. To you I should have been, of course, as submissive after my beating as while it was going on. No harm would have been done."

The Emperor smiled more than a half smile.

"I am not sure," he said, "that any harm was done, anyhow."

"What!" cried Brinnaria. "You excuse me? You defend me?"

"Softly! Softly!" the Emperor caveatted, raising his hand. "I do not acquit you nor exonerate you. But I do make allowances. And we must distinguish. We must not confuse the causes of my disapprobation of what you did with my reasons for believing that no harm resulted. Nor, for that matter, must we confound with either of them those qualities in yourself and those circumstances of the case which make me feel, illogically perhaps, but very possibly, more inclined to thank you than to censure you."

"Castor be good to me!" cried Brinnaria. "Am I dreaming?"

"Don't interrupt, you disrespectful minx," the Emperor laughed; "this is a lecture. Hear it out.

"In the first place you were technically right in saying that there is not one word in any sacred writing or in the pronouncements of the Pontiffs or the statutes of the Vestals to forbid a flogged Vestal from beating her scourger. Just as Solon in the code of laws which he drew up for the Athenians prescribed no penalty for the slayer of his father or mother, because, as he explained when the omission was pointed out to him, he had thought that no child would ever kill its parents; so no framer of rubrics ever foresaw the necessity of forbidding what no one conceived of as possible. All persons were assumed to be too much in awe of Pontiffs, for anyone to dare to raise a hand against any Pontiff, least of all a Vestal against her spiritual father. The world had to wait for a Brinnaria to demonstrate that the unimaginable could come to pass.

"Yet the very fact that it was nowhere written down that you must not do it makes your act all the worse. It was monstrous.

"But fortunately it was not sacrilegious. The person of the Pontifex of Vesta is not sacrosanct and a blow inflicted on him is not to be rated as impious. Your act called for no expiation, personal or official. It did not desecrate him, or you, nor the place where it occurred.

"Besides, I cannot resist admitting to you,"—and the Emperor smiled an unmistakable smile—"that this particular Pontiff of Vesta is farther from being sacrosanct than any of his predecessors. As far as I can learn, Faltonius is a worthy man, pious and scrupulous. But he is absurdly unfitted for his office in appearance and in manner. The self-importance he assumes, the pomposity with which he performs his duties, would be too great even for an Emperor. He irritates all of us. All of us have wished, secretly or openly, many, many times, that Bambilio would be soundly thrashed. He has been. You did it. The story was too good to keep. It has not, of course, been allowed to leak out, and become common property. But it is known to all the Flamens, Augurs and Pontiffs.

"I need not describe to you the feelings of my colleagues, nor my own. To hint them is perhaps too much; to particularize them would be unseemly. I may say, however, that just as street-boys acclaim you by shouting:

"'That's the girl that saved the dog;' just as all over the Empire you are talked of as the lady who rescued the retiarius; so at any festival or ceremonial in which the Vestals take part, many a dignitary is likely to nudge his neighbor, indicate you and whisper:

"'That's the priestess who walloped Bambilio!' You are not infamous, you are famous.

"As for myself I am the more inclined to feel indulgent towards you because I understand how you felt. You were boiling with rage at being struck by any one, as any noble girl would be. Yet you would have controlled your fury but for the fact that you knew that you yourself had done nothing to deserve chastisement, that you were suffering for another's fault."

"What!" cried Brinnaria.

"Oh, yes," Aurelius continued, easily. "Causidiena and I are quite agreed on that point. Neither she nor I have questioned Meffia, and we do not mean to; partly because we are sure enough, without any admission from her; partly because the matter is best left as it is, without any further notice. But, with the exception of Meffia, it is quite certain that, from the Vestals themselves down to the last slave-girl, every resident of the Atrium believes that not you but Meffia let the fire go out, and that you took the blame due her. And we can all conjecture your motives, as we all applaud them.

"Meffia might never have survived a scourging, might have been ailing for months. Rome wants no sick Vestals nor dead Vestals. Causidiena is grateful to you, all the Atrium is grateful, I am grateful."

"But," said Brinnaria, wide-eyed, "I had supposed that, if Meffia was suspected, there would be an inquisition and testimony under oath and that it would be obligatory that the Vestal actually at fault must be scourged."

"For once," the Emperor smiled, "you have failed to read accurately the statutes of the order. It is positively refreshing. I was beginning to feel that you were altogether too accurate. In fact the scourging of a delinquent Vestal is a mere disciplinary regulation, designed to assure the maintenance of the fire. It is not in the nature of a mandatory atonement. It has nothing in common with an act of expiation. It has nothing to do with placating or propitiating the Goddess. It has no likeness whatever to the punishment of a guilty Vestal."

"That reminds me," said Brinnaria, "of what I came for. I'm as grateful as possible for what you have said to me, surprised that Causidiena and you so easily saw through my deception, delighted that you take it as you have, more than delighted to find you so kindly disposed towards me. I need all the kindness you can feel towards me. I want to come to the point, to the reason why I am here. I want you to answer me this question :'Suppose I were accused of the worst possible misconduct, formally accused before you, what then?"

"Then," said Aurelius, "you would have a fair trial."

"I believe I should," said Brinnaria. "You would be perfectly fair and entirely just. And a fair trial would be a novelty. Almost never has an accused Vestal had a fair trial."

"Not even if acquitted?" the Emperor suggested slyly.

"No," Brinnaria retorted vigorously. "Even most of those absolved were not tried fairly. Postumia was, if the records from so long ago are to be trusted. The first trial of the third Licinia was perfectly fair, the minutes are very full and there is no shade of bias in the discussion of her many interviews with Crassus, while the court was plainly genuinely amused at his greed for desirable real-estate and at his artifices to induce her to sell cheap. Fabia, in the same year, was justly treated. But most of the other acquittals were quite as bad as most of the convictions to my mind. I can discover almost no trial where both sides had a full hearing, where the judges tried to get at the facts and kept their attention on the evidence, where the finding as the expression of the opinions rather than of the partiality of the Pontiffs. Almost every verdict on record, it seems to me, was dictated by favoritism or influence or prejudice or wrath."

"You seem to think you know a great deal about the subject of trials of Vestals," Aurelius remarked.

"I feel justified in thinking so," Brinnaria maintained. "Where the minutes of the court have perished, as, of course, in the case of all the trials before the capture and burning of the city by the Gauls, I have read what records remain. Where the court records are extant I have pored over every word of the minutes of the proceedings and of every document attached."

"That is more than ever I found time to do," Aurelius meditated. "Your conclusions ought to be of interest. What are they?"

Brinnaria drew a deep breath and went on. "I am convinced," she said, "that sometimes the accused received what she deserved, but generally by accident. The judges were swayed by politics or expediency or clan-feeling or popular clamor or self-interest, not by reason.

"Nobody could form any judgment, at this distance of time, about the guilt or innocence of Oppia or Opimia or Popilia or Porphilia or Orbilia or Orbinia or whatever her real name was, it all happened so long ago. But Minucia and Sextilia and Floronia and the rest were just victims of judicial ferocity, as far as I can make out."

"You are then of the opinion," the Emperor asked, "that there never was a guilty Vestal?"

"No," Brinnaria replied judicially, "I don't go as far as that. Varonilla was probably depraved and with her the two Oculatas. I don't think their suicides prove anything against them, for a woman is just as likely to hang herself because she despairs of a fair hearing as because she is conscious of guilt. What weighs with me is that they were brought up in the dissolute times of Messalina and Nero and that their relatives were leaders of the most profligate set in Rome, cronies of Vitellius and his coterie. But although Cornelia was bred and raised in the same social atmosphere, I am quite as sure of her innocence as all the world was the day she was buried and as everybody has been ever since. Domitian just murdered her without a trial, for political reasons and for moral effect. So likewise Marcia and the second Licinia were judicially murdered by that fierce old Cassius Longinus Ravilla. He was elected to convict them, not to try them, and he conducted the trial not to arrive at a fair verdict, but to force a conviction. He had some excuse, for their acquittal on their former trial had been brought about by idiotic bribing and family influence. On the face of the evidence at both trials they were clearly blameless. What ruined them was their trying to shield Aurelia, surely the worst Vestal on record, for she had everything in her favor, ancestry, upbringing and surroundings; she was beyond doubt innately vicious. She was the only Vestal ever justly convicted and justly punished, in my opinion. All the others were irreproachable women, doomed to a frightful fate by prejudiced judges. In general, an accused Vestal is as good as condemned, the whole population so dreads the results of acquitting an unclean priestess. And it is the easiest thing in the world for a Vestal to be accused. Refuse to sell a farm for half its value, snub a bore, order a slave flogged for some unbearable blunder, and the result is the same; false accusation with perjured witnesses and a quick conviction most likely to follow."

"The subject seems to have occupied your mind a great deal," Aurelius ruminated.

"Do you wonder?" Brinnaria flamed at him. "What in all the tragic, dramatic history of Rome is half so dramatic or a tenth so tragic as the burial of a Vestal? In all our centuries of ferocity, what seems half so cruel?

"I know that cruelty played no part in the invention of burial alive as a punishment for a convicted Vestal. I know that no caitiff could be found so vile as to dare to lay hands on a Vestal, no ruffian so reckless as to venture to end her life by sword or axe, by strangling or drowning. The most impious miscreant has too much fear of the gods to injure a consecrated priestess. The only way to dispose of a delinquent Vestal is to bury her alive. But the cruelty of it makes me choke. I think of the last hours of each of those who were punished, of their thoughts as the time drew near, of their feelings alone in the dark waiting for death to release them from their sufferings.

"I think of these underground cells as they are now, out there under that awful unkempt, ragged waste lot by the Colline Gate. I think of the skeletons mouldering on the mouldering cots, of the bones, the fragments of crumbling bones, the dust of crumbled bones on the stone floors, as they have been for hundreds of years, as they will be for thousands of years to come. The cot cannot yet have decayed from under what is left of poor Cornelia; her bones must still be entire and in order on the webbing; Aurelia's bones must be whole yet and Licinia's and Marcia's; of Floronia there can hardly be left a trace by now, where Minucia died there can be only an empty stone cell. Do you wonder that the subject haunts me?"

"I do and I do not," Aurelius replied. "I've let you relieve your mind by talking yourself tired. Now listen to me. I think I understand you perfectly. When you came to me before the novel responsibilities of your office had worn on your nerves and you were quivering with dread for fear you might be an unworthy priestess. Now the perils of your situation are wearing on your nerves and you are brooding over the possibility of accusation, trial, conviction and burial alive.

"I sympathize with you. As an Emperor I am exposed to the perpetual danger of assassination. You would be amazed if I detailed to you my various narrow escapes from death at the hands of disappointed seekers after preferment, of incompetent officials, of knaves with grievances of every conceivable and inconceivable variety and of fools with no grievance at all. You would be astonished if I merely reckoned the occasions on which I have just missed being killed. It gets on my nerves, more or less, of course. But I strive to bear up and remain calm and I succeed more or less. I keep before me the fact that as an Emperor I am obnoxious to countless hatreds from fancied slights and to uncountable schemes of revenge. I reflect that the danger is inseparable from the state of my being an Emperor. I try to be philosophical about it.

"So you must attempt to remain placid under the strain of the knowledge that you are exposed to perpetual danger of a horrible death from conviction on false accusation. It is part of the condition of being a Vestal. If anything goes wrong in the way of earthquake, flood, famine, pestilence, conflagrations or defeats, the populace are likely to cry out that some Vestal is unclean and bringing down on the Empire the wrath of the gods. That nothing of the kind has occurred during our recent afflictions has been clearly due to the holiness of Dossonia and Causidiena and to their reputation for strict discipline. But the danger of popular outcry is always real. Then there is the fact that far too large a proportion of our population are dissolute and that, among the dissolute-minded, all Vestals are under suspicion because they are the only women among our nobility who remain unmarried long after they have reached marriageable years. You must learn to take all this as a matter of course and to go sedately about your duties.

"Of course, I lessen my danger by keeping about me many trusty guards. It is right that you should appeal to me in your anxiety. I shall do what I can to lessen your danger. I believe in you. If you were accused before me it would take notably plain and convincing evidence to make me believe anything against you. I shall put my opinion of you on record among my papers of instructions to my successor. I shall declare it to all the Chief Pontiffs. I shall verbally and in writing make it clear to all concerned that you seem to me all you should be, that you are in an unusually difficult and delicate position and that in case of accusation all presumption should be in favor of your innocence and against the sincerity of your accusers.

"And now I think that ought to satisfy you and cover all the general considerations. Let us come to the special consideration that interests me chiefly. You have never come to me because you became gradually unnerved by brooding which had no specific origin or cause:

"Tell me plainly and outspokenly what has happened to you lately to fill your mind with thoughts of buried Vestals, trials, accusations and terrors?"

Brinnaria thereupon related her encounter with Calvaster and her conversation with Flexinna.

The Emperor stroked his beard and reflected.

"I have never liked Calvaster," he said, "and if I had been in the city to consider recommendations for appointments he would, assuredly, never have become a member of Rome's hierarchy. I deem him gravely unsuited for even the most minor grade of Pontiff. He appears to me to be mean-spirited, narrow-minded and base. I am inclined to believe of him all that you impute. But, even to such as Calvaster, we should be just. You complained, a while ago, that the judges of the Vestals had ignored both the facts and the evidence. Let us weigh the evidence and stick to the facts. The only fact you present is that you caught Calvaster lurking in your house. You confess that you were completely puzzled as to what motive brought him there. Your friend surmises an explanation which disgusts, insults and alarms you. You instantly credit it completely, think and act as if it were unquestionably true. I am prejudiced against Calvaster, as I have told you, yet I am by no means ready to admit that your beliefs about him are evidence against him, more particularly as they rest solely on Flexinna's ingenious conjectures. The notion is plausible and it is entirely congruent with Calvaster's character as I imagine it. Yet it is, after all, merely a plausible surmise. I am just as inclined to accept Calvaster's own explanation; he is an inquisitive busybody.

"My verdict is that you need feel no alarm."

"But I do," Brinnaria maintained; "I do not feel safe with Calvaster anywhere about."

The Emperor reflected.

"The peace of mind of a Vestal," he said, "is a matter of such importance to the state that I should not hesitate about ordering Calvaster banished to some comfortable and healthy island and there detained permanently, were it not that the fellow has made himself almost indispensable. The pestilence has carried off practically all the adepts at interpretation of the sacred writings, the prophetic books, the rubrics and rituals of the various temples, the statutes of the brotherhoods and other orders of the hierarchy. Only Numerius Aproniarius remains of the older experts, and he is afflicted by an incurable and loathsome disease which he cannot long survive. Of the younger men only Calvaster has displayed any aptitude for learning this delicate and complex art, only he has attained any reputation. He is, in the circumstances, indispensable, I cannot banish him merely to please you. You will have to endure Calvaster."

Brinnaria pulled a wry face, as in her mutinous girlhood. She felt entirely at ease with Aurelius.

"I perceive that I must endure him," she said, "but if you cannot banish Calvaster, perhaps you'll oblige me by banishing Almo."

"Almo!" the Emperor exclaimed, "what can you have against that gallant lad? Have you turned against him? I thought you were unshakably resolved to marry him, thought you loved him unalterably!"

"I shall marry him, if we both live," Brinnaria replied, "and most unalterably love him. But I love life and daylight and fresh air and my full meals even more. I have a splendid appetite, I loath stuffy places, I hate the dark. The idea of being shut in an underground cell to suffocate slowly or starve to death even more slowly goes against my gorge. I see myself in my mind's eye climbing down that ladder, like poor Cornelia, I see myself stretched out on my cot, watching the ladder being pulled up by the executioner, watching the workmen fitting in the last stone of the vault. I imagine myself staring at the wick of the lamp and wondering how long the oil will last and debating whether it would be better to blow out the light and save the oil to drink and so live longer in the dark, or to let the lamp burn out and have the discomfort of the light a little longer. I fancy myself conning over the trifle of bread, milk, fruit and wine left on the stone slab, and speculating as to how long they'll keep me alive.

"Bah!

"No burial alive for me.

"Acquittal on a trial is a poor way for a Vestal to escape the worst possible fate, a last resort, at best, and an unchancy reliance, even as a last resort. A far better way is never to be tried, and the best way never to be tried is never to be accused. You've been good enough to tell me that if I were accused you'd be predisposed to favor me in all possible ways and that you'll give instructions as to your opinion of me. Any directions of yours would be respected by any heir of yours. But you yourself have just remarked how slender is an Emperor's hold on life or on power. I may survive both yourself and your son. I might be tried before men we should never think of now. I must arrange so that I shall never be tried at all, I must live so that I shall never be accused.

"Now I am unlikely ever to be accused in relation to any man except Almo. Everybody knows I mean to marry Almo when my service is at an end, everybody knows he means to marry me, everybody knows we are in love with each other. That puts me in the most delicate position any Vestal ever was placed in. I have been extremely careful. I have never spoken to Almo since I was taken for a Vestal, have never met him except by accident, have never set eyes on him except against my will; have never even written a letter to him or received one from him. I have been, I think, wise, judicious and controlled. But Almo has not behaved well towards me."

"Indeed!" Aurelius interjected. "You surprise me! What has he done?"

Brinnaria flushed.

"A girl in love," she said, "is a fool, but she has sense enough to conceal her foolishness. A man is different. I suppose men are made that way and can't help themselves. But a man in love is not only a fool, but he parades his foolishness. Almo sent me messages by all sorts of mutual acquaintances, by his people and mine, by Flexinna, by Nemestronia, by Vocco, begging me to exchange letters with him. I was angry and said so and repeatedly sent him word that he was most foolish and most inconsiderate. I sent him word that if he wanted to please me he'd ignore my existence and stay as far from me as possible.

"He actually begged his father to be allowed to come to Rome. His father had the good sense to keep him at Falerii. Now that all his relatives are dead and he is his own master he has come to Rome. If he had any real consideration for me he'd go to Aquileia, at least he might be satisfied with a popular resort like Baiae or a place like Capua; Capua has enough baths and shows and horse-races and gladiators for anybody.

"But he must come to Rome, when a spark of sense and decency would tell him to keep as far away as he could. It stands to reason that I could never be accused of misconduct with him if he had never been within a hundred miles of me since I was taken for a Vestal.

"But he must needs come to Rome. He has opened his house on the Carinae and had it put in order and has settled down to such a life here as is usual with wealthy leisured idlers. He has bought additional furniture, as if his father's house wasn't stuffed with everything magnificent, he has bought curios and antiques and statuary and pictures and books. He spends most of his time in the barracks of his favorite gladiatorial company or at the stables of the Greens, and the rest of it at the afternoon baths. I sent Vocco to him to protest and to urge him to leave Rome for my sake. The selfish wretch said he loved me and always would, but he just could not live anywhere except at Rome. He stays here, in defiance of my wishes and against all reason."

"That is not what I should have expected of him," the Emperor meditated. "I am surprised and far from pleased. I shall certainly find means to relieve your mind as far as he is concerned."

"There is worse yet to tell," Brinnaria went on. "You'd think that, if he must stay in Rome he'd at least have the decency to keep away from me and from places where he is likely to encounter me. He does just the reverse. He haunts me, he waylays me. He prowls up and down the Via Sacra and the Via Nova, he stands in the moonlight and stares up at the outside windows of the Atrium; on festival days he waits outside of our entrance to the Colosseum or of the Circus Maximus to watch me enter; on any day he loiters about the portal of the Atrium to watch me come out to my litter or my carriage, he dogs me on my airings."

"Hercules!" Aurelius exclaimed. "This is too bad!"

"Too bad indeed," Brinnaria pursued; "it would be bad enough from anybody in his position, from him it is ten times worse than from anyone else. You know how individual Almo is, how almost peculiar he looks, how no one would mistake him for anyone else or forget him or fail to recognize him. I have often tried to analyze the factors that go to make him look so striking, but I cannot. He is perfectly proportioned in every measurement, yet, somehow, he has a long-armed and long-legged appearance different from that of any young man in Rome, he gives almost the effect of reminding one of a spider or of a grasshopper or of a daddy-long-legs. It makes him the most conspicuous, the most recognizable man in all Rome. Why, if your son were to mingle in a crowd, habited like any other boy in that crowd and Almo did the same, and nobody in the crowd had any reason to expect to see either, Almo would most likely be noticed sooner than Antoninus, recognized more generally, more readily, further off and quicker."

"You are right," Aurelius mused, "I never thought of that, but Almo is unforgettable, striking and arresting to the eye beyond any lad in our nobility."

"And being what he is," Brinnaria raged, "he must needs arrange that nearly every crowd I am in should see him at the same time as me. Already thousands of reputable Romans must remember seeing us at the same glance. Before long the majority will be ready to recall, if the subject is broached, that they have habitually seen him wherever they saw me. Some one will start the talk and presently all Rome will buzz with the gossip that we are continually seen together. A charming state of affairs for me if some busybody or some enemy of mine raises the question of my fitness for my holy duties! I have protested. I've had Vocco go to Almo and urge all these considerations on him, and the silly boy says he can't live without seeing me, that he longs for the sight of me so he cannot control himself. How's that for lover's folly? One minute he can't live away from Rome, he loves Rome more than he loves me; the next minute I'm the one object on earth which he must behold or die. I've no patience with such imbecility."

"And I have very little," said the Emperor; "just enough to imagine a better way of disburdening you and of disposing of Almo than banishing him would be. The lad is far too good to be wasting his time with the horse-jockeys and charioteers and ostlers of the Greens, or brutalizing himself with the companionship of ruffianly prize-fighters, belonging to this or that speculator in the flesh of ferocious savages. He must find some outlet for his energies and interests and is carried away by the fashionable mania, which is corrupting our whole population, especially our young nobles, and which, even at his tender age, fills the thoughts of my son, to the despair of his tutors.

"All Almo needs is worthy occupation. I'll put the sea between him and you and so put your mind at rest. I'll make a man of him at the same time. I'll appeal to his pride and his patriotism. Rome needs such keen-minded, capable youths on the frontiers. I'll not give him too hard or too unpleasant employment, not relegate him to Britain or Dacia or Syria. I'll send him to Africa to chase the desert nomads who are harrying the borders of Numidia and Mauretania. He can gain credit there without danger, can learn to command men and to know the great game of war. Nepte and Bescera are pleasant little cities—he will be comfortable between campaigns. I'll see he sets out the day after to-morrow, at latest."



CHAPTER XI - FAREWELL



Two days later, Brinnaria had a visit from Flexinna. Flexinna's eyes were dancing.

"G-G-Guess where I've been," she challenged.

"I'm not good at guessing," Brinnaria parried; "better tell me."

"I've b-b-been to the Palace," Flexinna revealed.

"What took you there?" Brinnaria queried, surprised.

"I was sent for," Flexinna declared, elated.

"Who'd you see?" Brinnaria enquired.

"The Emperor himself," proclaimed Flexinna triumphantly.

Brinnaria was very much astonished.

"Better tell me the whole story," she suggested.

"Not much story," said Flexinna. "Aurelius t-t-told me that he wanted t-t-to see you again and that, as a formal visit from the Emperor as P-P-Pontifex Maximus at the Atrium was unusual and was likely to c-c-cause g-g-gossip, whereas you Vestals are c-c-continually at the Palace to ask favors for all sorts of people who p-p-pester you to use your influence with the Emperor, he thought it b-b-best to suggest that you apply for an audience t-t-to-morrow. He said he wanted the intimation c-c-conveyed to you as unobtrusively as p-p-possible and d-d-desired p-p-particularly that no one should ever know or g-g-guess that it had b-b-been g-g-given. So he sent for me, as your b-b-best friend, since he was sure I would never t-t-tell anybody.

"B-B-Better send along your application for an audience. It was p-p-plain to me that he has something agreeable to t-t-tell you. His face was just as g-g-grave as usual but his eyes sparkled at me, as d-d-different as p-p-possible from their habitual dull filmed appearance. He was all k-k-kindliness and anticipation."

"I'm willing to take the hint, of course," Brinnaria replied.

Next morning she found Aurelius most cordial and informal in his greeting to her.

"I've been investigating Almo," he said, "and I am more than pleased with all I can learn of him. I see no reason for not telling you that, from the very day you were taken as a Vestal, some of the most expert, secret and trustworthy men in the employ of the information department have had no other duties than to keep close watch upon you and Almo. I have been over all the papers relating to him and to you, I have talked with the men themselves. They all assure me that never once have you and Almo met since he reached your father's house a half hour too late. They also report that, in the course of his injudicious moonings about your haunts, he has always kept at a respectful distance. And except for those same loverly danglings about places where he might catch glimpses of you, I can find nothing against the lad. Everybody speaks most highly of him. His former tutors and preceptors are enthusiastic in their laudations of his capacities, abilities, diligence and attainments in all matters pertaining to books and study. About Falerii he was regarded as a fine specimen of a young nobleman, huntsman and swimmer, good at all rustic sports, as haughty as the proudest when he was given good cause to assert himself, but habitually affable, unassuming and sunny tempered. Towards his father's tenants and slaves he was most kindly and nothing could be more to any man's credit than his downright heroic behavior from the very day the pestilence appeared on his estates, all through the frightful period of its raging about Falerii, until the neighborhood had somewhat recovered after the plague had abated.

"The most extraordinary feature of the reports about him is that they all agree as to his amazing devotion to you. All persons who know him or know of him are unanimous in the opinion that he has never taken the slightest personal interest in any human being except yourself; all are emphatic in stating that he has certainly never manifested any affection for anyone else. This is unprecedented. I never heard of such another case. There is nothing astonishing about a young Roman declaring that he would remain unmarried for thirty years in order to mate, ultimately, with the girl of his choice. There is nothing wonderful about his keeping his word. But any other youth I ever heard of would have consoled himself variously, and variedly. Almo's austere celibacy is a portent in our world and altogether marvellous. It lifts his affair with you out of the humdrum atmosphere of to-day and puts it on a level with the legendary stories of heroic times, with the life-long fidelities of the Milesian tales.

"Under the stress of such severe and unflinching self isolation I do not wonder that his broodings drove him to overstep the bounds of common sense, that he was irresistibly compelled to leave Falerii, to come to Rome, to loiter where he might, at least, behold you at a distance. I shall make sure that he does so no longer. This very day he sets out for Carthage, Theveste and the deserts to the south beyond the lagoons of Nepte. But I cannot be angry with him for being unable to restrain his longing at least to set eyes on you. And I see no reason why you two, who have not exchanged a word in more than nine years, should not meet here in this room and say farewell to each other before I put the Mediterranean between you."

Brinnaria sprang up.

"I see many reasons," she declared, "and my feelings are all against seeing Almo until my service as a Vestal is ended."

"I can well believe," came the answer, "that you feel that way at the first presentation of the idea. But I am your Emperor and also Chief Pontiff of Rome. I am engaged at present in solving the problem of ow best to ensure peace of mind to one of Rome's Vestals. To ensure her peace of mind I am about to relegate her future husband to important duties on a far frontier of the Empire. I judge that he will better perform his duties, that she will better perform hers, if she bids him farewell in my presence. I am a lover of wisdom and a student of wisdom.* I believe I possess some pretensions to wisdom. Will you not defer to me in this? I am of the opinion that he will worry less about you and you less about him if you see each other once before your twenty years of certain separation begins."

Brinnaria looked mutinous and gazed at the Emperor in silence. In silence he waited for her to speak. At last she said, curtly:

"I bow to your authority."

The Emperor struck his silver gong and a page appeared. Aurelius gave a brief order. A few moments later Almo was ushered in. After his formal salute to the Emperor he stood silent, his eyes fixed on Brinnaria.

They made a fine picture. The ceiling of the immense hall was a barrel-vault, of which the beams were stuccoed in cream-white, picked out with gilding, while between them the depth of each soffit was colored an intense deep blue, against which stood out a great gilt rosette. The mighty pilasters, whose gilded capitals supported the vaulting, were of many-veined dark yellow marble, polished and gleaming like the slabs of pale yellow marble which panelled the interspaces. The high-moulded wainscot was of red and green porphyry, somberly smooth and shining. Against it, below the wall-panels, were set great chests of carved and gilded wood, while about the bases of the pilasters were placed groups of settees and armchairs, similarly carved and gilded and richly upholstered. The floor was paved with an intricate mosaic of parti-colored bits of marble, its expanse broken only by the great gorgeous carpet before the throne, by the chair set for Brinnaria, by the onyx table, supported on sculptured monsters like griffons, beside the throne, and by the throne itself, a curule seat of ivory mounted with gold, its crimson cushion glowing, set far out in the room.

Before the throne stood Aurelius, his head bare, the long ringlets of his hair and beard sweeping his shoulders and his bosom, one foot a trifle advanced, the gold eagle embroidered on his sky-blue buskin showing beneath the crimson silk robes, lavishly embroidered with a complicated pattern of winding vines, bright blue and green, edged with gold, which the etiquette of the time imposed upon even a philosophically austere Emperor; on his right Brinnaria, erect and tense in her white official habit, her square white headdress all but hiding her coronet of dark braids, her veil pushed back from her flushed face; the tassels and ribbons of her head-band, her great pearl necklace, the big pearl brooch that fastened the folds of her headdress where they crossed on her breast, and the bunch of fresh white flowers which it clasped, rising and falling with the heaving of her bosom; facing her, splendid in the gilded armor and scarlet cloak of a commander of irregular cavalry, Almo.

"You know why I have sent for you," Aurelius reminded him. "Speak out."

Like a school-boy repeating a lesson by rote, Alma spoke.

"Brinnaria," he said, "the Emperor has remonstrated with me on my recent folly. I am sincerely ashamed of myself and I wish to apologize to you for my lack of self-control and for my lack of consideration for you. I leave Rome before sunset and shall not return until I may return without danger to you."

Aurelius looked at Brinnaria.

"Caius," she said, "I forgive you. I trust that you will win promotion and honor where you are going and I am sure that you will do your duty to the Empire. May the blessing of all the gods be on you and may you return to me safe and well."

"And may I find you safe and well when I return," spoke Almo. "Farewell, Brinnaria."

"Farewell, Caius," said she.

The Emperor nodded and Almo bowed himself out.

"Do you know," said Aurelius, when they were alone, "I have been thinking over what you said about Almo's peculiar notability of looks. It puzzles me as it puzzles you. He is not merely of distinguished appearance, he is unusual, striking, unforgettable, conspicuous. I have talked about it to several of my gentlemen-in-waiting, equerries and orderlies. They have seen him lately about the stables of the Greens. They all say that he is, in fact, as normally proportioned as any youth alive, but they confirm what you said about his long-legged appearance. Julianus used almost the same word you used, said Almo looked 'Grasshoppery.' They all say Almo is precisely the most unmistakable, the most readily and quickly recognizable youth in all our young nobility."

Brinnaria rose to go. Aurelius bent on her a kindly smile.

"I have been talking about you with Faustina," he said. "We are both much interested by the strangeness of your fate, by the difficulty and delicacy of your situation and by the wonderful constancy of you both. Faustina and I are a most united pair, never happy out of each other's company and very proud of our domestic felicity. We are, if I may use the word, rather prone to gloat over it, and, while continually congratulating ourselves and each other, we cannot but mourn the infrequency of such happiness throughout our Italian nobility. There are few matrons in Rome as serenely happy as your friend Flexinna, few indeed who find all their happiness in children, husband and household. And of those who really enjoy their homes most are remarried after a divorce, or even after two or more. Our society suffers from a plague worse than the pestilence itself, a plague of greed for excitement, eagerness for novelty, of peevishness and fickleness.

"In this unhealthy atmosphere such households as Vocco's are most notable. And that you, who seem by nature fitted for just such blessedness as has befallen Flexinna, should have been robbed of it by a strange series of peculiar circumstances wins for you our interest and our solicitude. Still more are our hearts drawn towards you by your unwavering fidelity, alike to your present duties and all that they imply and to that love which you have had to put away and forget, to the ideal of that felicity which you have had to postpone so far.

"Faustina desires an interview with you. She is now in the amber gallery. I shall have you conducted there, if you do not object."

Brinnaria could not very well object and after an equerry, very stately in his garb of duty, and two gaudily clad pages had escorted her through what seemed like miles of corridors, she found herself alone with the Empress.

The Empress she had so far seen infrequently and spoken with only seldom. It was impossible to be a Vestal, in the heyday of Rome's Imperial times, and not meet and know the Empress of Rome. Brinnaria had seen her whenever they were both present at the Circus or the Amphitheatre; had been close to her at all important state functions; had occasionally dined with her at formal Palace banquets, when the curved sofa about the Empress' table was always occupied by the Empress, the wives of the chief Flamens and the Vestals; but had hardly ever exchanged a word with her.

Faustina was endowed with the general healthiness with which Roman noblewomen were blessed. But she had had the bad luck to suffer from many and severe illnesses. These and her slow recoveries from them had kept her away from very many official functions and public festivals. Numerous had been the occasions on which Aurelius had appeared without her. When she was well, indeed, they were always together, if possible. A great proportion of his time, however, was occupied with official duties of such a nature that, according to Roman etiquette, no woman could participate in them. During such enforced separations Faustina sought amusement. And with the overflowing energy and abounding vigor which she displayed between her illness, she threw herself into the whirl of her pleasures with such impetuosity, there was so much rollicking and roistering about her favorite diversions that she attracted to herself and kept around her just those elements of Roman society with which the Vestals were least likely to mingle, professional idlers, and what we moderns would call the fast set. Naturally, therefore, Brinnaria and Faustina had never had any familiar intercourse. This was their first real conversation.

Faustina was not a large woman. She was of medium height, slender and graceful. She was noted for the originality of her coiffures, which made the most of her magnificent hair. Her hair Brinnaria noticed the moment her eyes fell on her.

Her habitual expression of haughtiness and boredom had vanished from the Empress's face and she was all kindliness and solicitude.

Faustina put her at her ease at once.

"I have always been so sorry," she began, "that I was ill the day you climbed over the balustrade of the podium and rescued the retiarius. I've missed many a sight I regretted, I miss so much by falling ill again and again, but I never missed a sight I regretted missing more than that. Nothing more worth seeing ever happened in the Colosseum."

"I was terribly ashamed when I found what I had done," said Brinnaria.

"Of course you were," the Empress agreed.

This broke the ice between them and Faustina led her into a long talk about all her past, her love affair, her life as a Vestal, her bereavements, her embarrassing circumstances, her future, her hopes.

Brinnaria left the Empress, feeling that she had found a real friend and also feeling comforted at heart.

Chapter XII -Observances



BRINNARIA found that, with Almo definitely and permanently out of the way, she did not worry about Calvaster. She also found that she did not worry about Almo and that her glimpse of him had rather calmed her feelings. She confessed as much to Aurelius when she had a third audience with him before he left for the Rhine frontier, and she thanked him for his insistence.

With her mind at peace Brinnaria settled more and more into the routine of her life and enjoyed it more and more.

She came to feel keenly the spiritual significance of every detail of the ritual observances in which she took part. Besides the maintenance of the sacred fire, the Vestals had many obligatory duties. Every sacrifice of the Roman public worship involved the sprinkling of the sacred meal upon the head of the victim, if a live animal was offered, or upon the fire, if the sacrifice was bloodless. Early in each ceremony one of the small boys assisting the priest carried around to all the participants in the act of worship a maple-wood box containing the holy meal; from it each worshipper ladled a small portion into the palm of his right hand; at a specified point in the course of the ceremonial each participant sprinkled the meal as prescribed.

The holy meal was made of very coarsely ground wheat, a sort of grits, salted and toasted. It was prepared by the Vestals according to immemorial custom. They were supplied with a sufficient quantity of heads of wheat, the best of the produce of two of their estates, one near Caere, the other near Lanuvium. These wheat ears were packed in baskets and stored on the farms in dry, airy barns. There they were kept drying and hardening their grains until the next spring. Then the allotted baskets were brought into Rome. On the seventh of May, after a ceremonial of prayer, the three elder Vestals began going over these wheat-ears, sorting out those entirely perfect, and placing them in larger baskets shaped like the big earthen jars in which the Romans commonly tored wheat, olives, oil, wine and other similar supplies. On the next day the wheat from the first day's selection of ears was separated from the straw, beards and chaff, was roasted and coarsely ground. The resultant groats were then put away in great earthen jars in the outer storeroom of the temple. On the third day they again selected wheat ears, on the fourth they again prepared wheat-grits, arid so on alternately for eight days. By the evening of the eighth day they had stored enough groats to make the sacred meal for one year's ceremonies of the entire Roman ritual.

The salt with which they salted the holy meal was prepared with similar invariable formality. Crude salt, obtained from evaporated sea-water out of the sand-pits on the seashore near Lavinium, was conveyed to the Atrium in small two-handled earthenware jars. This coarse, dirty, dark-colored salt was dissolved by the three younger Vestals in boiling water, which water might not be obtained from the lead pipes which connected the Atrium with the general water-supply of the city's aqueducts, but must be drawn by the Vestals themselves and carried by them in the earthenware jars from the famous fountain of Jaturna, at which Castor and Pollux were fabled to have watered their white horses after bringing to Rome the news of the victory at Lake Regillus. The solution was purified by repeated boilings, the impurities being gotten rid of by successive careful decantings of the liquid from one vessel into another, so that the sediment might be left behind as the top part was poured off. When sufficiently boiled down the solution was recrystallized in shallow earthenware pans. The resulting slabs of salt were harder than the pans and were freed from them by breaking the earthenware with an ancient stone hammer, said to have been captured by AEneas himself from a king of Ardea. The slabs of salt were sawed into pieces with an iron saw, the pieces were pounded in a mortar, the fine salt was thrown into an earthenware bowl and dried out in a kiln. When dried a little powdered gypsum was stirred through it to prevent it from again becoming moist. It was then stored in a tall jar with a tight lid, which was kept in the outer storeroom of the temple, along with the jars of meal. Three times a year, on the ninth of June, on the thirteenth of September and on the fifteenth of February, with solemn prayers the Vestals mixed the prepared salt with the prepared grits, the resultant mixture being the sacred meal.

On each First of March the fire in the temple was allowed to go out and was solemnly rekindled by the friction of maple wood on apple wood, as when the fire went out by accident. The temple was then decorated with fresh boughs of green laurel, after the boughs put up the year before had been removed.

On May fifteenth the Vestals were the chief figures in a solemn procession of the entire Roman hierarchy to the Sublician bridge, from which the Vestals threw into the Tiber thirty dolls made of rushes, fifteen representing men, fifteen women, each about two feet high.

This offering to the river of effigies of men and women commemorated the primitive human sacrifices by which the river was each year placated, that it might not drown more by floods.

On June fifth the inner storeroom of the temple was opened and its treasures inspected by the Pontifex wearing his antique vestments. With him entered always also the Chief Vestal clad in her austere habit with all her badges of office. They were attended by the other Vestals, who went through traditional pacings, haltings and prayers. The Temple of Vesta was an enclosure from which all men were rigidly excluded. The only exceptions to this immemorial taboo were a few of the more important Pontiffs, and they might only enter on specified festal days, and then must be in their full regalia. Also, in general, the temple was closed against all women except the Vestals and their assistants. It was open, however, from sunrise on the morning of each seventh of June until sunset on the evening of the fourteenth of June. During this period it was incumbent upon every Roman matron to visit the temple. And each worshipper must walk the entire distance from her home to the temple and must leave her house barefoot, barefoot she must walk from the temple to her home. Only illness excused a Roman woman from this religious duty. Few ever omitted it from indifference.

During these eight days the temple was thronged.

During these eight days also fell the great yearly festival of Vesta, on the ninth of June, on which day also all millers kept holiday, with processions and picnics to which the mill-donkeys were led decorated with wreaths of flowers and strings of tiny, crisp-baked rolls.

On June fifteenth the temple was ceremonially cleaned and the sweepings and the ashes collected from the sacred fire for the year past were solemnly carried in a stately procession to a prescribed spot on the slope of the Capitol where a great pit was closed by a heavy maple-wood door. In this pit the ashes were reverently buried.

Besides these observances of their special cult the Vestals took part in nearly every important sacrifice, procession and festival of the public worship of Rome. They were busy women and among them Brinnaria was anything but idle. She never found time hang heavy on her hands.

So busied with her duties she passed three peaceful years, contented and happy. There was but one drawback to life in the Atrium from Brinnaria's point of view. That drawback was Meffia. Meffia was never ill but never well. Everything tired her. It tired her to walk upstairs, to stand for any length of time, to do anything. She was forever sitting down to rest or lying down to rest. Excitement exhausted her totally. She was a perpetual worry to the other Vestals.

Otherwise Brinnaria was very happy. Through Flexinna she had frequent news of Almo. Ancient Rome had no institution, public or private, in any way corresponding to our post office. But routes of trade and travel by land and sea were well defined and traffic along them fairly regular, on the most used routes almost continual. There were private organizations, vaguely resembling our modern express companies, which forwarded merchandise along the main-travelled routes and even into remote regions. Their messengers took charge of bales, boxes and packages of all sizes and also of letters. The service on the roads of Africa, from Bescera, Nepte and Putea along the frontier of the desert, through Lambese, Capsa and Thysdrus, to Carthage, by well-built vehicles with frequent relays of horses on the excellent highroads was fairly good. The ships from Sicily plied with almost the regularity of our ocean-liners. Roads and road-service in Sicily were of a high quality of excellence. The transit to Italy at Messina was a sort of ferry. Italy was served by a network of roads always busy. Almo's letters to Flexinna were fairly regular and Vocco heard frequently from his friends among Almo's brother officers and sometimes from his military superiors.

Almo was an immediate and brilliant success as a leader of scouting expeditions, cavalry dashes, and, within a year, of raids in considerable force. His men adored him at once; his fellow-officers found him excellent company, unassuming and companionable, his commanders came early to rely on him. He won an excellent reputation and was universally regarded as a young officer of great promise, likely to rise to high position and not unlikely to become famous.

This kind of news delighted Brinnaria and promoted her peace of mind. In great contentment she went about her duties, loving them more and more from month to month, preparing the blessed salt, assisting at sacrifices, participating in processions.

Also interest in music and enjoyment of music came to play more and more a part in her spiritual life. As a child she had hated music and had been in continual conflict with her musical governesses. Even after she entered the Atrium her aversion to learning anything about music had given Causidiena a great deal of trouble. Later Brinnaria was docile, but the reverse of enthusiastic. Only after Almo's departure for Africa did music begins to mean anything to her.

But one keyed instrument was known to the ancients. That was a form of organ, in effect and appearance not very dissimilar to a small portable modern organ, with one bank of keys. Its mechanism, however, was very different in respect to the construction of the pipe stops and bellows. In particular, the steady flow of air to the pipes was obtained from the pressure of water, and a receptacle partly filled with water was an essential part of every Roman organ. From this feature it was called the water-organ. The Emperor Nero had been a notable performer on the water-organ and had interested himself in some improvements in its mechanism.

As with the modern organ, so with the Roman water-organ, the sonorous, sustained and resonant notes lent themselves naturally to the expression of religious emotion.

Religious emotions, Brinnaria, at this period of her life, felt to an overwhelming extent. She expressed them in long colloquies with Numisia and Causidiena, in a tendency to be unnecessarily careful about her duties, to pet her daily routine, as it were; and in an awakening to the charms of music in general and of organ music in particular. She developed into a capable performer on the water-organ, bought for herself the finest to be found in all Rome, had it set up in the Atrium in place of the old one which had belonged to the order of Vestals, and sat before it for hours at a time.

Her solitary communings with her favorite instrument became her chief solace when she was: low-spirited, which was seldom, and her favorite diversion when she was high-spirited, which was often. Moreover, her rendition of well-known airs and he improvisings came to be a great pleasure to all the inmates of the Atrium, most of all to Causidiena.

Besides her many duties and her indoor amusements, Brinnaria found time for much activity outside the Atrium. She had kept up her girlish friendship for the sieve-maker Truttidius, and saw him occasionally, sometimes ordering her litter halted before his shop and leaning out to ask after his health and that of his family. Truttidius had an ailing household, though he himself was always well and never seemed to get any older.

From her talks with Truttidius she came to take a personal interest in the welfare of the countless tenants in her many properties in the poorer quarters of the city. She visited some of them-a sort of approach to modern slumming by the philanthropic rich. Such actions on the part of a landowner and such an attitude of mind from any rich person toward the poor was very unusual in the ancient world. Her behavior in this regard won Brinnaria a sort of fame among the poor, as if she were a live goddess moving among them.

She had a healthy love of mere enjoyment too. Except when she happened to be on duty watching the sacred fire, she never missed a theatrical performance, a gladiatorial display or an exhibition of chariot-racing in anyone of the vast race-courses flanked by tiers of stone-seats, which the Romans called circuses. At all shows, whether of scenic artists, fighting men or speeding horses, the Vestals had specified seats, as good as the best.

Besides these formal pleasures, she took great delight in mixing in society merely for society's sake. Moderns are likely to imagine that the Vestals of ancient Rome were nuns or something like nuns. They were nothing of the sort. They were maiden ladies of wealth and position whose routine duties brought them into familiar association with all the men important in the Roman government, hierarchy, nobility and gentry and with their wives and daughters. They were women of such importance in their world that their acquaintance was sought by all who had any pretensions to being entitled to meet them and by shoals of social bounders who had none. Their influence was so powerful that they were unremittingly sought, waylaid, pursued and besieged by persons who hoped to enlist their interest in the appointment or promotion of this, that or the other connection or relative; by the same persons they were continually overwhelmed with presents of flowers, fruit, delicacies, dainties, ornaments, laces, garments, pieces of furniture, horses, slaves, and of anything and everything capable of being made a present of in the Roman world; likewise with social invitations-chiefly to dinners, banquets and feasts. Invitations to banquets and dinners Brinnaria seldom declined, unless her duties made acceptance impossible or the invitation came from people beneath her notice. As she had said to Aurelius, she had an excellent appetite. She had an epicurean tendency from her early years and was fond of oysters, sweetbreads, eels, thrushes, turbot and other articles of food esteemed as delicacies by the Romans. But she was a hearty eater and consumed generous portions of roast meats, particularly of pork, which even in late imperial times was the staple of Roman diet. She never lost her childish relish for boiled pork and cabbage, for bacon, for ham, hot or cold. She was by no means a glutton, ate deliberately and daintily, and while she ate, joined in the general conversation or even led it. She had a quick wit and a sharp tongue and her sallies were acclaimed. She was sought after as a guest not merely because she was a Vestal, but for herself, for her gaiety and her unexpected utterances.

On the whole she preferred informal dinners to formal banquets and liked better to dine with her friends than with the most luxurious entertainers in Roman society.

With Vocco and Flexinna she dined frequently, three times a month at least and generally oftener. Brinnaria loved children, especially babies, and there was always a baby in the Istorian household—Flexinna's babies were all healthy and grew famously. Of the six children, Brinnaria could not have told which she loved or which loved her most. Her arrivals were always heralded with shouts of glee, her romps with the children always put her in a good humor, her swim with Flexinna sharpened an appetite which needed no edge, while the cosiness and informality of Flexinna's dining-room, where each of the three had undivided possession of one entire sofa, made it certain that nothing marred her enjoyment.

CHAPTER XIII - Perversity



ABOUT three years after her farewell to Almo, on entering Vocco's house one afternoon, Brinnaria had a presentiment of something wrong. The children were as vociferous and as whimsical as usual, but there was a nameless difference in Flexinna's expression and bearing. As soon as they were alone in their bath, after she had had one good plunge in the pool, Brinnaria, treading water in the deepest part of the tank, shaking her head like a wet spaniel, demanded:

"What is the matter? There's something wrong. You might as well tell me."

But Flexinna put her off and laughed at her insistence.

To Brinnaria the laughter seemed forced and so did the talk at dinner. No sooner was the dinner over and the tray of figs, almonds and pomegranates and other fruit on the table, than she whispered to Flexinna:

"Tell the servants to stay out. I want to talk." Flexinna signed to Vocco and they exchanged glances.

"Why did you keep up the farce so long?" Brinnaria sneered. "I saw through it from the first."

"We were afraid," Vocco apologized, "that what I have to tell you would spoil your appetite."

"It would take something pretty bad to spoil my appetite," Brinnaria reflected. "Is Almo dead?"

?Not so b-b-bad as that," spoke Flexinna.

"Tell me, Quintus," Brinnaria breathed.

Vocco fidgeted.

"It's an amazing story," he began.

"All his story, all my story, all our story," Brinnaria cut in, "is amazing. Leave out the comments and tell the story."

"While Almo was away on the expedition against the nomads of the plateau," Vocco narrated, "Pennasius fell ill, was allowed to resign his governorship and Grittonius took his place. On Almo's return Grittonius complimented him most highly and promised him any reward he asked for. Almo amazed him by asking for a full and honorable discharge from the army. Grittonius expostulated with him but Almo held him to his promise. In spite of the governor's appeals to his pride and to his patriotism he insisted, and Grittonius gave him his full official discharge. At once Almo applied for permission to sell himself as a slave. This so astounded Grittonius that he made him repeat the application before witnesses and give his reasons. Almo explained that he had always been devoted to horseracing and that he wanted formally and regularly to article himself to one of the racing companies as a charioteer; that he had always craved that life and had longed for it more and more as his career as a soldier went on. He said there was no use in his continuing a life he detested, nor missing the happiness he anticipated as a charioteer.

"Grittonius had him examined by a committee of the most reputed physicians of the province. They reported Almo entirely sane. Grittonius wanted to hold the matter over until he had special permission from the Emperor. Almo craftily maintained that Grittonius had been made governor with the fullest powers on all lines specifically to save the Emperor from being bothered about such trifles. Grittonius yielded. The necessary papers were drawn up, all the depositions were made out in duplicate. Every formality was fulfilled and Almo was publicly sold as a slave in the market place of Hippo."

"What company did he enter?" Brinnaria queried.

"Veppius did not state," Vocco replied; "he merely said that Almo sailed the next day for Spain."

"The fool!" Brinnaria cried. "The three fools; a fool of a Veppius to write so vaguely, a fool of a governor to be persuaded so easily and Almo the biggest fool of all!

"What a fool of a lover I have! Are all men like that? I'm as much in love with him as he with me and I can behave myself decently and keep outwardly calm and observe the conventions of life. Why can't he be decent? How can it comfort a man in love to throw away a splendid career, abandon a great income and vanish from the ken of all who love him? What madness is this with which the gods afflict him? Oh, I could tear my hair with rage!"

To trace Almo everything was done that could be done. Vocco himself set out at once for Hippo. He found that Almo had been sold to a Greek slave-dealer named Olynthides, brother of the well-known dealer at Rome. He found Olynthides a small man with a club-foot. He said he remembered the matter, that he had been employed to buy Almo and resell him for cash, especially to conceal the real purchaser.

When Vocco expressed astonishment Olynthides said:

"There is nothing to be surprised at, the thing happens every day. It is a regular feature of slave-trading. There are all sorts of reasons why a man wants a slave without any past. Such sales are customary and habitual."

When pressed further he retorted:

"Of course I did not ask the buyer's name; equally of course, I did not take any note of him, it was my business to forget him. I didn't notice him when he came into the courtyard, there are always knots of people coming in all day, looking over the slaves I offer for sale, and going out again. He came in like anybody else and looked over my stock. When he spoke to me he had a servant with him carrying a stout leather bag. He indicated Almo and asked his price. I named it.

"'Cash sale,' says he; 'no papers except a bare sale certificate.'

"'Done,' says I.

"He counted out the cash from his servant's bag and I gave him the customary certificate, with a description of Almo and the statement:

"'Sold on this day and date for cash' and my signature and seal. That was all there was to it."

When Vocco was persistent, Olynthides averred that he had "heard" that the purchaser's name was Jegius and that he came from Cadiz. Vocco could not discover anyone in Hippo who had ever heard of a slave-dealer named Jegius.

When Vocco returned to Rome with his report Brinnaria set in motion all the forces of her world which could be utilized under the circumstances. Aurelius was on the Rhine frontier, but Brinnaria had, by this time, a close acquaintance with all important court officers and was on terms of the utmost cordiality with the officials who governed Rome in the Emperor's absence. They sympathized with her and put at her disposal all the machinery of the government secret service. They agreed with her that the matter must be kept quiet, there must be no proclamations, posters, no rewards offered by crier or placard, no publishing of descriptions. With emphatic injunctions of secrecy they sent warnings to every provincial governor, to every local magistrate, to the aldermen of every free city, to institute unobtrusive investigations and to keep unostentatious watch. Brinnaria insisted that these mandates should be sent all over the Empire, pointing out that no one could conjecture what port of the Mediterranean or of the Black Sea might be the destination of any nameless trading ship. But, with special care, full orders were distributed throughout Spain.

Towards Spain, likewise, Brinnaria directed the energies of those organizations of the ancient world which were analogous to our modern private detective bureaus, and upon Spain she focussed the energies of the managers of the racing companies.

These great corporations were among the most important money-making enterprises of the Roman world. They maintained luxurious headquarters in the most congested business districts of the capital. They had offices adjacent to each of the circuses, they possessed huge congeries of buildings utilized as stables for their crack racers and barracks for their charioteers, and provided with spacious courtyards for training their teams. Outside of Rome they had similar offices and training-stables in every city and in most towns of any size or wealth. Besides they owned countless stud-farms, estates and ranches in every province of the Empire and maintained an army of herdsmen, ostlers and drovers to convoy their horses by land and whole fleets of ships to transport them by sea.

They were joint-stock companies, and while many smaller ones existed in various parts of the Empire and a few even at Rome, the small concerns were insignificant and generally ignored. When one spoke of the racing-companies one meant the six great companies whose central organizations were domiciled at Rome and whose ramifications penetrated every district of the Empire. These were known, after the racing-colors of their jockeys, as the Greens, the Blues, the Reds, the Whites, the Crimsons and the Golds. The Reds and the Whites were the oldest companies, the Crimsons and the Golds were companies established in the heyday of the Empire by coteries of millionaires, the Blues and the Greens were the largest, the wealthiest and the most popular, especially the Greens. In the Greens, somewhere, Brinnaria expected to find Almo, as he had been enthusiastic about the Greens from boyhood. He had been wearing their leek-green colors the day she had sat in his lap in her father's courtyard. He had haunted their training-stables during his brief sojourn at Rome before Aurelius sent him to Africa, he had inherited a big block of stock in the Greens. In the Greens, likewise, Brinnaria owned stock; and, having entered into inheritances from more than seventy different wealthy relatives who had died during the pestilence, she happened to own stock in every one of the six great companies. She had personal friends among the directors of each of the six. Therefore it was especially easy for her to enlist their help in her efforts to find Almo. It would have been easy, anyhow, since to be able to oblige a Vestal was a refreshing novelty for almost anyone at Rome and to find a Vestal seeking one's influence and one's help, equally novel and refreshing; generally the shoe was on the other foot—most persons in public life in Rome were used to attempting to enlist the help and the interests of the Vestals for their purposes and were generally utterly at a loss for any means of requital, if the interest of a Vestal was enlisted and her help obtained.

Consequently all that the racing-companies could do to find Almo was done as well as all that could be done by the private detective agencies and by government officials.

All that was done was utterly in vain. No trace of Almo could be discovered after he had sailed from Hippo with Jegius. No slave-dealer named Jegius could be found nor anyone who knew such a slave-dealer. No clue, no ghost of a clue came to light. The Greens, like the other companies, could find among their charioteers, their jockeys, their free employees, their slaves, no individual in the least answering to descriptions of Almo. All governmental efforts, all professional efforts, all private efforts, all Vocco's efforts, all Brinnaria's efforts, were completely baffled.

Almo had completely vanished.

When Aurelius, passing through Rome on his way from the Rhine frontier to Syria, was in his capital for a brief period, Brinnaria had an audience with him.

"Daughter!" he said, "it is all my fault. I should have given Grittonius explicit injunctions about the boy. But the assaults of the Marcomanni were particularly furious just at that time; I was feverishly hurrying from point to point along the frontier; I accepted the resignation of Pennasius; by letter. I appointed Grittonius by letter; I assumed that Grittonius would have sense; I assumed that Pennasius would impart to him his secret instructions. I erred by inadvertence; I should have set a special watch on the boy. But I never thought of it. He was doing so well and he seemed so interested in his work. He was wonderfully fitted for frontier duty along the desert. I was watching him with keen interest; each report of him gave me greater pleasure. I do not hesitate to tell you that I had him in my mind's eye to command this very expedition which I must now command myself, as there is no other man in the Empire fit to take charge of it.

"Is it not a shame that a man whom the Empire needs, who had before him so splendid an opportunity, who was fitting himself for so brilliant a career, should throw it all away from mere perversity? Yet I am not wrathful against him; I see many reasons for sympathizing with him.

"Rigid and unflinching celibacy affects different individuals very differently. Some it does not affect at all, apparently. It does not seem to affect you. You are as plump and rosy, as healthy and alert, as happy and normal a young woman, to all appearance, as could be found among matrons of your age in all the Empire. Celibacy seems to agree with you.

"Manifestly it did not agree with Almo. It got on his nerves somehow. That is the most probable explanation of his eccentric vagary. Don't be discouraged. He'll turn up somewhere, after a while, safe and sound and none the worse for his experiences."

Brinnaria, in fact, was not discouraged. She resolutely and unweariedly prosecuted her efforts to find Almo. Nor was she despondent. She scouted the suggestion that he might be dead. She kept up her spirits, did not mope or brood and never lost her hearty appetite. She was the life of the dinners she attended nd as talkative and witty as ever.

But the strain affected her greatly. She was outwardly controlled, statuesque and dignified, but the inward turmoil of emotion that surged through her manifested itself in an unremitting activity. She slept well and soundly, but rose early and kept on the go. Besides her duties, her music and her participation in social gatherings, she must needs find other outlets for her energy, other means to pass her time and distract her thoughts.

In the course of her dealings with the racing companies she became interested in them not merely as means towards locating Almo, but for themselves. She became particularly interested in their stables, their jockeys and their horses. There was no bar of religious tradition or of social custom which hindered a Vestal from freely mingling with men visibly in the open daylight in public. Visiting the stables of the racing companies had long been a fad with Rome's social leaders, men and women alike. Brinnaria availed herself of her freedom in this regard and followed her inclination. She haunted the training-stables of all six corporations, but mostly of the Greens, always in company with Manlia, or Flexinna, or Nemestronia or some other of her women friends; she visited the barracks almost daily, chatted with the charioteers, grooms and ostlers, watched the exercising of the teams, inspected the stalls, conned the racers.

She made herself an excellent judge of a jockey and a better judge of a horse.

She interested herself in the methods by which the companies obtained and selected their animals. She became an adept on the entire subject of horse-raising. It engrossed her thoughts.

Then she herself took over the management of several of her estates in the environs of Rome; of all, in fact, which were near enough for her to visit personally. She redistributed the force of slaves that managed them, sold some, bought others and fitted up the properties as stud-farms. Herself she selected the brood mares and stallions with which to stock these estates. She herself laid down the principles guiding their management and she herself dictated the methods of breeding them. She herself superintended the carrying out of her orders, visiting each estate frequently and inspecting everything carefully and intelligently.

Her first offering of two-year-olds sold at good prices. She was encouraged, felt herself completely an adept, and would take no one's word about anything relating to horses, relying solely on her own judgment.

All this would have subjected her to much reprehension had Faltonius Bambilio survived. But he had died just about the time of Almo's disappearance. His son, also named Faltonius Bambilio, had taken up a political rather than a priestly life and was not to be thought of as his successor. In his place Aurelius, on his way to Syria, had nominated Lutorius Rusco, a man who impressed everyone at first sight, and more and more the better anyone knew him, as the paragon of a Pontifex. He was not lacking in ecclesiastical unction, but did not wallow in it as had Bambilio. He was pious, but did not think it necessary to advertise it day and night unremittingly. He was not lax in religious matters, but he was no stickler for minute trifles. He inspired confidence by every characteristic of his appearance and behavior. He was a man somewhat over medium height, well built, neither heavy nor large, with an unusually dignified bearing and carriage, not a hint of self-assertion and with a genially comprehending smile. It was impossible not to confide in him and unthinkable that confiding in him should ever be regretted. Brinnaria confided in him and never regretted it.

Of Almo's disappearance she talked to him freely; freely also she talked of her feelings for Almo. He was as sympathetic and comprehending as the Emperor and Empress and he encouraged her to hope that Almo was yet alive, which she sometimes doubted.

Of her stock farms he said to her:

"I should certainly not have advised any woman to enter upon such an enterprise, least of all a Vestal. I know of no other member of our hierarchy who has any similar interests, except Calvaster, whose haunting of the gladiatorial schools and association with trainers of gladiators has given some scandal. Some people would call your horse-breeding unseemly for a Vestal. But I see no harm in it. I have talked with Causidiena and it is clear that you do not neglect or skimp your duties, that you give them full time and close attention. Your leisure is your own to do with as you please. And your immediate success appears an evidence that, to say the least, your undertakings give no offence to the gods."

During the latter months of Bambilio's oversight Brinnaria had felt restive and as if some inward force was forever driving her to feverish activities; under the care of Lutorius she became placid and thought less of her stock-raising, journeys to and fro to her estates, talks with grooms and such like activitie and devoted herself with more cool ardor to her duties.