The Unwilling Vestal / White, Edward Lucas, 1866-1934

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Title: The Unwilling Vestal

Author: Edward Lucas White

Release Date: July, 2004  [EBook #6070]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on November 1, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE UNWILLING VESTAL ***




Project Gutenberg Etext The Unwilling Vestal
by Edward Lucas White

Project Gutenberg editor's note:

First published in 1918, this book went through sixteen printings
before it ceased to be a money-maker for its publishers. It provides
a fascinating glimpse into a world most of us know nothing about.

It has been slightly re-edited for ease in reading as an e-text.
The author's spellings have been left alone even when they are
incorrect in English English, American English, and Latin.

End PG editor's note.

THE UNWILLING VESTAL




The Unwilling Vestal
A Tale of Rome under the Caesars


JACKET BLURB:



EDWARD LUCAS WHITE
Author of "El Supremo"

This book presents, for the first time in fiction, a correct and
adequate account of the Vestal Virgins, their powers and
privileges, as well as of many strange Roman customs and
beliefs.

The author combines the power of writing a rattling good story
with a sound and full knowledge of conditions of the life which he
is depicting. Mr. White brings to the history of Rome all the
picturesqueness and power which made his South American novel,
"El Supremo," so remarkable. The result is a vivid pageant of
imperial Rome and Roman life at the height of its power and splendor.

End of Jacket Blurb


PUBLISHERS' NOTE



Readers of <The Unwilling Vestal> who are not acquainted at first
hand with the lighter and more intimate literature of the Romans
may be surprised to discover that the lights of Roman high society
talked slang and were interested in horseracing. Most writers
who have tried to draw Roman society for us have been either
ignorant or afraid of these facts. The author of <The Unwilling
Vestal> is neither. He presents to us the upper class Romans
exactly as they reveal themselves in the literature of their day;
excitable, slangy, sophisticated and yet strangely credulous,
enthusiastic sportsmen, hearty eaters and drinkers, and
unblushingly keen on the trail of the almighty denarius. In a word,
very much like the most up-to-date American society of to-day.

The Publishers feel that it is only fair that it should be made
plain that the great difference between the Roman society folk
of <The Unwilling Vestal> and those appearing in other novels
is due to the author's thorough acquaintance with the people
and the period about which he is writing.

Incidentally, the Publishers wish to thank Mr. C. Powell
Minnegerode, the Curator of the Corcoran Gallery of Art of
Washington, D. C., for his permission to reproduce Leroux'
beautiful painting "The Vestal Tuccia" for use on the wrapper of
the volume.

[wrapper not available - PG ed.]

End of Publisher's Note


PREFACE by author



The title of this romance is likely to prejudice any reader
against it. There exists a popular delusion that fiction with
a classical setting is bound to be dull and lumbering, that it
is impossible for it to possess that quality of bravura slangily
denominated "punch." Anybody will be disabused of that notion
upon reading this story.

<<PG EDITOR'S NOTE: The slang is now, alas, over ninety
years old. It now sounds even more stilted than the classical
language does.>>

On the other hand, after having read it, almost any one will be
likely to imagine that a novel with so startling a heroine and with
incidents so bizarre cannot possibly be based on any sound and
genuine knowledge of its background; that the author has conjured
out of his fantasy not only his plot and chief characters, but also
their world; that he has created out and out not merely his Vestal,
but his Vestals, their circumstances and the life which they are
represented as leading: that he has manufactured his local color
to suit as he went along.

Nothing could be further from the actuality. The details of rule
and ritual, of dress and duties, of privileges and punishments are
set forth in accordance with a full first-hand and intimate
acquaintance with all available evidence touching the Vestals;
including all known inscriptions relating to them, every passage in
Roman or Greek literature in any way concerning them, the
inferences drawn from all existing or recorded sculptures and coins
which add to our knowledge of them, and every treatise written since
the revival of learning in Europe in which the Vestals are
discussed. The story contains no preposterous anachronisms or
fatuous absurdities. Throughout, it either embodies the known
facts or is invented in conformity with the known facts.

Any one to whom chapter twenty-one seems incredible should consult
an adequate encyclopedia article or an authoritative treatise on
physics and read up on the surface tension of liquids.


End of Preface by Author


Contents



Book I

The Rage of Disappointment

I.                 Precocity
II.                 Sieves
III.                 Stutterings
IV.                 Pestilence
V.                 Escapades
VI.                 Notoriety
VII.                 Audience

Book II

The Revolt of Despondency

VIII.         Scourging
IX.                 Alarms
X.                 Conference
XI.                 Farewell
XII.                 Observances
XIII.         Perversity
XIV.                 Amazement

Book III

The Rebellion of Desperation

XV.                 Rehabilitation
XVI.                 Vagary
XVII.         Recklessness
XVIII.         Fury
XIX.                 Comfort

Book IV

The Revulsion of Delight

XX.                Accusation
XXI.                Ordeal
XXII                Triumph
XXII.                Salvage





Book I






The Rage of Disappointment




Chapter I - Precocity



"Brinnaria!" he said severely, "you will marry any man
I designate."

"I never shall marry any man," she retorted positively, "except
the man I want to marry."

She gazed unflinchingly into her father's imperious eyes, wide-set
on either side of a formidable Roman nose. His return gaze was
less incensed than puzzled. All his life he had been habituated
to subserviency, had never met opposition, and to find it from his
youngest daughter, and she a mere child, amazed him. As she
faced him she appeared both resolute and tremulous. He looked
her up and down from the bright blue velvety leather of her little
shoes on which the gilt sole-edges and gilt laces glittered to the
red flower in her brown hair. Inside her clinging red robe the
soft outlines of her young shape swelled plump and healthy, yet
altogether she seemed to him but a fragile creature. Resistance
from her was incredible.

Perhaps this was one more of her countless whims. While he
considered her meditatively he did not move his mighty arms or
legs; the broad crimson stripe down his tunic rose and fell slowly
above his ample paunch and vaster chest as his breath came evenly;
on his short bull neck his great bullet head was as moveless as if
he had been one of the painted statues that lined the walls all
about. As the two regarded each other they could hear the faint
splash of the fountain in the tank midway of the courtyard.

Her father, a true Roman to his marrow, with all a Roman's
arbitrary instincts, reverted to the direct attack.

"You will marry Pulfennius Calvaster," he commanded.

"I will not!" she declared.

He temporized.

"Why not?" he queried.

The obstinacy faded from Brinnaria's handsome, regular face.
She looked merely reflective

"In the first place," she said, "because I despise him and hate
him worse than any young man I ever knew; I would not marry
Calvaster if he were the only man left alive. In the second place,
because, if all the men on earth were courting me at once, all
rich and all fascinating and Caius were poor and anything and
everything else that he isn't, I'd marry nobody ever except Caius.
You hear me, Father. Caius Segontius Almo is the only, only man
I'll ever marry. Nothing can shake my resolution, never."

She was breathing eagerly, her cheeks flushed a warm red through her
olive complexion, her eyes shining till tiny specks sparkled green and
yellow in the wide brown of her big irises.

Her father's jaw set.

"I've listened to you, daughter," he said. "Now you listen to
me. I have no objections to Almo; I rather like him. I have thought
of marrying you to him; if Segontius and I had not quarreled, we
might have arranged it. There is no possibility of it now. And
just now, for some reason or other, Pulfennius is keen on arranging
a marriage between you and Calvaster. His offers are too tempting
to be rejected and the chance is to good to be missed. Our properties
adjoin not only here and at Baiae, but also at Praeneste, at
Grumentum and at Ceneta. With our estates so marvellously
paired the marriage seems divinely ordained when one comes to think
it over. Don't be a fool. Anyhow, if you insist on making trouble
for yourself, it will do you no good. My mind is made up. You are
to marry Calvaster."

"I won't!" Brinnaria maintained

Her father smiled, a menacing smile

"Perhaps not," he said, "but there will be only one alternative.
Unless you agree to obey me I shall go at once to the Pontifex
and offer you for a Vestal."

Every trace of apprehension vanished from Brinnaria's expression.
She grinned saucily, almost impudently, at her father, and snapped
her fingers in his face.

"You can't scare me that way, Daddy!" she mocked him. "I know
better than that. There can be only six Vestals. You can offer, if
you like, but the Emperors themselves can't take me for a Vestal
while the six are alive."

The laugh muffled in her throat; she was fairly daunted. Never had
she seen her father's face so dark, so threatening. Not in all her
life had he so much as spoken harshly to her; she had been his pet
since she had begun to remember. But now, for one twinkling,
she feared a blow from him. She almost shrank back from him.

He did not move and he spoke softly.

"Rabulla died this morning before dawn," was all he said.

Instantly Brinnaria. was fluttering with panic.

"You aren't in earnest, Daddy!" she protested. "You can't be in
earnest. You're only fooling; you're only trying to frighten me.
You don't really mean it; oh, please, Daddy, say you don't really
mean it!"

"I really mean it," her father answered heavily. "I never meant
anything more genuinely in my life. You know my influence with
the Emperors and with the Pontifex of Vesta. You know that if I
made the proposal they would disregard any rival petitioners, would
override all unnecessary formalities, would have the matter
despatched at once. Unless you obey me you will be a Vestal
before sunset to-morrow."

Brinnaria was now fairly quivering with terror.

"Oh, Daddy!" she quivered, "you couldn't be so cruel. I'd rather
die than have to be a Vestal. I couldn't imagine any life so
terrible. Oh, Daddy, please say you are not in earnest."

He frowned.

"I swear," he said, "that I was never more in earnest. I say it
solemnly, as sure as my name is Marcus Brinnarius Epulo, I'll
have you made a Vestal unless you agree this moment to give up
all thoughts of Almo, to obey me about marrying Calvaster, and
to be properly polite to him and Pulfennius."

"Daddy!" Brinnaria cried. "Only don't have me made a Vestal and
I'll do anything. I'll forget there ever was an Almo. I'll be sweet
as honey to Pulfennius till he loves me better than Secunda, and
I'll marry Calvaster; I'll marry anybody. Why, Daddy, I'd marry
a boar pig rather than be a Vestal."

Her father smiled.

"I thought my little daughter would behave properly," he soothed
her, "and you are just in time. That may be your future husband
and father-in-law coming now."

In fact they were in a moment ushered in. Pulfennius was a tall
man, lean and loose-jointed, with straggling, greenish-gray hair;
a long, uneven head, broad at the skull and narrow at the chin;
puffy, white bags of flabby flesh under his eyes; irregular yellow
teeth and sagging cheeks that made his face look squarish. Calvaster
was a mere boy, with a leaden complexion, shifty gray eyes, thin
lips, and an expression at once sly and conceited.

"You come opportunely," said their host after the greetings had
been exchanged, "for you happen to find me alone with the very
daughter of whom you and I were talking. This is Brinnaria."

"This!" Pulfennius exclaimed. "This the girl we were talking about?
Impossible! Incredible! There must be some mistake."

"There is no mistake," his host assured him. "This is the girl we
were talking about, this is Brinnaria."

The visitor regarded her, respectfully standing now, her brown
eyes down-cast, the flush faded from her olive-skinned cheeks, her
arms hanging limply at her sides. She was tall for a girl and while
slenderly built was well muscled, a fine handsome figure in her red
robe.

"This!" he exclaimed again. "Indeed. So this is Brinnaria. I am
very glad to have seen her. And now having seen her, do you not
think that our business would be better transacted by us three males
together?"

"Certainly, if you prefer," Brinnarius asserted.

He patted Brinnaria and kissed her.

"Run away now, little girl," he said, "and wait in the peristyle
until I want you."

Brinnaria, once in the rear courtyard, instantly called:

"Guntello!"

Her call was answered by a great brute of a slave, bigger even
than her father, a gigantic Goth, pink-skinned, blue-eyed and
yellow-haired.

"Now listen to me, Guntello," his little mistress said, "for if
you make any mistake about my errand you'll get me into no end of
trouble."

The Goth, manifestly devoted to her, leaned his ear close and
grinned amiably. She repeated her directions twice and made him
repeat them after her in his broken Latin. When she was sure that
he understood, she despatched him with a whispered injunction:

"Hurry! Hurry!"

Meanwhile, in the gorgeous atrium, the fathers' conference had
continued. The moment she had gone Pulfennius said:

"I do not believe in discussing misunderstandings before females;
evidently there is some misunderstanding here. I want for my son
a bride younger than he is, even if he has to wait two or even
four years to claim her. You assured me that your daughter
Brinnaria was not yet ten years of age and you show me a grown
woman and tell me that she is Brinnaria. What is the explanation?"

"A very simple explanation," he was answered. "Merely that
Brinnaria is unusually well grown and well developed for her age.
I have seen other cases of early ripening in children and so must
you."

"I've seen girls grown beyond their years," Pulfennius admitted,
"but no case comparable to this. Why, man, that girl who has just
left us would be taken for over eighteen years old by any stranger
at first sight of her, and no one on earth could look at her
carefully and hazard the conjecture that she might possibly be
under sixteen."

"Quite so," his host agreed, "and the better you know Brinnaria
the more you wonder at her. She not only looks sixteen or eighteen
and acts as if she were that age, but she talks as if she were
that old and thinks as if she were even older, and she is actually
three full months, more than three months, to be precise three
months and twelve days, under ten years of age."

"Amazing!" spluttered Pulfennius, "astounding! inexplicable!"

"Don't you believe me?" Brinnarius queried sharply.

"Certainly I believe you," his guest disclaimed, "but I cannot
realize that it can be true; I am bewildered; I am dazed."

"Perhaps," the other suggested, "you would realize it better if
Quartilla added her assurances to mine."

"Oh," the other deprecated, "I do not require anybody's
corroboration to your statement. But if her mother is at home,
perhaps her presence would be as well for other reasons."

When summoned his host's wife appeared as a medium-sized woman,
neither plump nor slender, with a complexion neither brown nor
white, with yellow-brown hair, gray-brown eyes, and in every
outline, hue, and feature as neutral and inconspicuous a creature
as could be conceived of.

"Yes," Quartilla said, "everybody is surprised at Brinnaria's
growth. I was scared, when she first began to grow so fast, and
had special prayers offered and sacrifices made at the temples
of Youth and Health. Also I had a Babylonian seer consult the
stars concerning her birth-signs. Everybody said she was born to
long life, good health and great luck. But I can't fancy what ever
made her grow so. She was fed like her brothers and sisters and
she never seems to eat any heartier or any oftener. Till she was
two and a half she was just like any other child. But she has
grown more in seven years than any other child I ever knew of
ever grew in fourteen and she's so old for her years too. Not but
that she plays with dolls and toys and jacks; and she runs about
just like any other child of her age, in spite of her size; but
she says such grown-up things and she has such a womanly mind. She
understands the family accounts better than I do, is keen on
economy and could oversee the providing for the entire household.
She astonishes me over and over. But there is no doubt about her
age. Both my sisters were with me when she was born and
Nemestronia too. Ask any of the three. Or I can tell you a dozen
other ladies who know just as well. Brinnaria will not be ten
years old until the Ides of September."

"Wonderful! marvellous!" Pulfennius exclaimed. "Madam, you amaze
me. But if this is true so much the better. I had thought my boy
must wait two years or more for a wife, as I am determined that
no more of my sons shall marry wives of their own age, let alone
older. If your daughter is so young, she will just suit me, and
since she is already grown up we shall not have to wait for her
to grow up. We can arrange for the wedding for this month."

They chaffered a long time about the marriage settlement,Calvaster
sitting silent, biting his lips, staring about him and fidgetting;
Quartilla equally silent, but entirely placid, without the twitch
of a muscle or any shift of gaze; the two men doing all the talking.
Some of the talking was almost vehement, Pulfennius disclaiming
promises which his host declared he had made. Once they came to
a deadlock and then Brinnarius, his voice suddenly mild and soft,
mentioned Rabulla's death and his notion of offering Brinnaria for
her successor. At once Pulfennius became manageable and supple
and all eagerness for the happiness of the young couple.

When it seemed that they had reached an agreement on every point
Quartilla had her say.

"I think you will find Brinnaria everything you could wish as a
daughter-in-law. The most uncanny thing about her precocious
habits of thought is her tenacity of any resolve and her grave and
earnest attitude towards all questions of duty and propriety. She takes
clan traditions very seriously and is determined to comport herself
according to ancestral precedents. You will have no fault to find
with her respectfulness towards you and Herrania or with her
behavior as a wife. She will be circumspect in her deportment
towards all men and is sure to turn out an excellent housewife.
She has lofty inherited standards to live up to and she is deeply
devoted to them.

"This is the more to be wondered at since she is strangely
undignified in many ways. I trust this will wear off as she grows
up. It is only in this respect that Brinnaria has ever given me
any cause for concern. She is more like a boy than a girl in many
ways. She not only plays with boys and plays boys' games and
plays them as well as boys or better, not only climbs trees when
she is in the country, and rides bareback and goes fishing and
swimming in any stream or pool, and ranges the woods and cannot
be restrained; but also she will indulge in the wildest pranks, the
most unthinkable freaks, play rough practical jokes on anybody
and everybody, laugh out loud, shout and yell, gesticulate and
contort herself into undignified postures and act generally in an
uproarious and uncurbed fashion. She keeps up that sort of thing
even in town, and is boisterous and unexpected beyond anything I
ever heard of in any young girl She is most docile in all really
important things, but in respect to her jokings and shriekings
and carryings-on she is really beyond my control. She is never
openly disobedient, yet she is most ingenious at devising methods
for avoiding obedience. Sometimes I lose patience with Brinnaria.
But, when I really think it all over, there is no harm in any of it.
Strangers, however, would think her a very terrible girl; she
belies herself so. Any one becoming cognizant of some of her
vagaries would form a very unfavorable judgment of her and most
unjustly. In her heart she is anything but the wild creature she
makes herself appear. Her squawks of merriment, her rude
interruptions of her elders, her pert remarks, her sarcastic jokes,
are all the manifestations of mere overflowing animal spirits, of
warm-blooded youth and hearty health. She will tone down. She is
the most startling and incalculable child I ever heard of. No one
could anticipate her eccentricities. There is an originality of
invention about her pranks which amazes me. But I am sure she
will turn out all that I could wish."

"I trust so, indeed," said Pulfennius dryly. "I am grateful to you
for warning me; I promise not to misjudge her because of any
childish freakishness. And now it seems to me that we should
make the young lady herself a party of this conference and bring
the matter to a final settlement."

Brinnarius called a slave and bade him fetch Brinnaria.

Almost at once the fellow, a dark-skinned, obsequious Lydian,
returned looking scared and yet on the verge of laughter. He
could barely control his merriment, yet was plainly afraid to utter
what he had to say. His master ordered him to speak.

"Instead of coming with me," he said, "the young lady sent a
message. But I am afraid to give it to you. I am afraid of a
thrashing if I give the message as she gave it to me."

"Another of her jokes," her father growled. "You shan't suffer
for any of her impudence. Repeat her exact words; I'll hold you
excused, Dastor."

Dastor, reassured, grinned with anticipated enjoyment and said:

"She says she is sitting down and very comfortable where she is,
that she will not stand up till she feels inclined, and that if you
want to see her you can come to her, for she will not come to you."

For a moment there was a tense silence.

Pulfennius spoke first.

"If this is a sample of the sort of deportment which my future
daughter-in-law is expected to outgrow I might as well be shown
just what this kind of behavior is like. Let us acquiesce and go
to the little witch, if you do not object."


"I don't object at all to going," his host replied, "but I object to
her behavior; I'll make her smart for it. Come, let us have it
over with; I'll show you a submissive Brinnaria or I'll know the
reason why."

They stood up and from the open atrium passed into a narrow
passage lighted only from the two ends and so into the larger
courtyard with gleaming marble columns at each end and long
rows of them down each side. The tank under the open sky was
much larger than that in the atrium and had two fountains in it.
Pigeons cooed on the tiles of the roofs, and two or three of them
strutted on the mosaic pavement among the columns.

The party, dumbfounded and stunned, stood without voice or
movement, gazing at the picture before them.

The pavement was a cool grayish white in effect, for its mosaic
work was all of pale neutral tints. Above it the background was
all white,--white marble walls, the white marble polished pillars
of the peristyle, white marble entablature above them, the general
whiteness emphasized by the mere streak of red tiled roof visible
against the intense blue of the sky.

The only color in the picture was to the left of the tank and close
to it, where there had been set a big armchair upholstered in blue
tapestry. In it sat a tall, fair-haired, curly-headed lad, with
merry blue eyes. He wore a robe of pale green, the green of young
onion tops. Against that green the red of Brinnaria's gown showed
strident and glary, for Brinnaria was sitting on his lap. His arms
were round her waist, hers about his neck. She was slowly swinging
her blue-shod feet rhythmically and was kissing the lad audibly and
repeatedly. As her elders stood still, petrified, mute and
motionless with amazement, she imprinted a loud smack on the lad's
lips, laid her cheek roguishly to his and peered archly at them,
saying:

"Glad to see you again, Pulfennius; what do you think of me for a
daughter-in-law?"

"I do not think of you for a daughter-in-law," Pulfennius snarled
furiously.

He turned angrily to Brinnarius.

"What does this mean?" he queried.

His host echoed him.

"Brinnaria!" he called, imperatively. "What does this mean?"

"Mean?" she repeated. "It means that I am making the most of
Almo while I can. I love Almo; I've promised to forget him, to be
a good wife to Calvaster, and of course I'm going to keep my word.
>From the moment I'm married to Calvaster I'll never so much as
look at Almo, let alone touch him. So I'm touching him all I can
while I have the chance."

She paused, kissed Almo twice, lingeringly and loudly, and looked
up again.

"How's that for kissing, Calvaster?" she chirped. "Don't you
wish it was you?"

"Come, son!" Pulfennius spluttered, "let us be gone! This is no
place for us. We are being mocked and insulted."

"Nonsense, Pulfennius!" his host exclaimed. "Can't you see that
I had no part in this, that the minx devised it all by herself
expressly to thwart me? Don't let her have the satisfaction of
outmanoeuvering both of us. Don't let a mere prank of a child
spoil all our arrangements. She'll be a good wife as she says."

"A good wife!" Pulfennius snorted. 'I much doubt whether she
can now ever be a good wife to any man. I'm sure she'll never be
a wife to my son. You'd never convince me that she's fit to be
my son's wife. Make her a Vestal, indeed! She a Vestal? She's
much more likely to be something very different!"

"Do you mean to insinuate--" his host began.

"I mean to insinuate anything and everything appropriate to her
wanton behavior," Pulfennius raged.

The two men glared at each other in a silence through which could
be heard the cooing of the doves, the trickle of the two fountains,
Brinnaria's low chuckle and the faint lisping sound of three
distinct kisses.

"I beg your pardon!" spoke a voice behind them.

The four looked around.

"What brings you here, Segontius?" Brinnarius asked.

"One of my slaves brought me word," the intruder explained, "that
my son had entered this house. I knew you had not changed your
mind since you forbade him to cross your threshold, so I came here
at once to disclaim any share in his intrusion and to take him
home. I feared he might get into mischief."

"He has," Brinnarius replied, sententiously, "as you may see."

Brinnaria, entirely at her ease, hugged Almo rapturously and
kissed him repeatedly.

"And I thought," Segontius pursued, "that you would probably
smash every bone in his body if you caught him."

"I don't know why I haven't," spoke the big man reflectively.

"I know," shouted Pulfennius, "I can tell you. It is because this
whole comedy has been rehearsed between you just to make me
ridiculous. I know your way, your malignity, your tenacity of a
grudge, your pretence of reconciliation, your ingenuity, your
well-laid traps. I'll be revenged for this yet!"

"You won't live to be revenged," Brinnarius told him, "unless you
get out of here quick. I'll break every bone in your body, for
certain, if you address another word to me."

"Come, son, said Pulfennius, and shambled away.

"And now," spoke Segontius, "don't you think, Marcus, that you
and I had best forget our quarrels and be friends again? These
young folks were plainly meant for each other by all the gods
who favor lovers. Let us not stand in the way."

"Indeed, Lucius," spoke the big man, holding out his huge hand.
"I am of the same mind. But both of them deserve some punishment
for their presumption. They should wait four years at least before
they marry. My girl is too young."

"I agree," said Segontius, "and I'll send my boy to Falerii for
the present. That will keep them apart and ensure propriety of
behavior."

"That is well," growled Brinnarius, "and I'll send my girl to her
aunt Septima's."

Brinnaria sprang up.

"Aunt Septima's?" she cried. "Spinach and mallows and a tiny
roast lark for dinner every day. I'll starve to death And prim!
I'd almost as lief be a Vestal!"



Chapter II - Sieves



To her luxurious but austerely managed villa, Aunt Septima welcomed
Brinnaria with heartfelt, if repressed affection. Until the second
sunrise Brinnaria controlled herself. Then the good lady endured
her overgrown niece for some strenuous days, suffered impatiently
for a few more, but finally packed off to Rome "that unspeakable
child." At home again Brinnaria demanded pork and cabbage.

"My insides are as empty as the sky," she wailed. "Asparagus
is all very well, but it's none too filling, even if you can eat
all you want, and aunty says ten stalks is enough for any one meal.
Chicken-breast is good, hot or cold, but aunty would never let me
have a second helping. She wouldn't even let me have as much bread
as I wanted and only one little dish of strawberries. I filled up
on raw eggs, all I could find in the nests. But, my, six days of
raw eggs was five days too many for me. I'm wild for cabbage,
all I want, and pork, big hunks of it."

She got it and slept a sound night's sleep.

The next day she craved an outing on foot. Her mother, prone to
the shortest cut to peace on all occasions, acquiesced at once and
let her go out with her one-eyed maid, Utta.

Utta, born somewhere beyond the Rhine, had been brought to Rome
when a small child and had no memories except memories of Italy.
She was the most placid and acquiescent creature imaginable. Her
little mistress led her first of all to the nearest pastry-cook's
shop where the two ate till they could not swallow another crumb.

Brinnaria, like many eccentric children born to wealth and
position, had special favorites, almost cronies, among the lowly.
Chief among them was the old sieve-maker of the Via Sacra. To
his shop she made Utta lead her. Utta interposed no objection.
Utta never objected to anything. But in this case she was
especially complaisant, since opposite the sieve-maker's was a
fascinating embroidery shop, the keeper of which was entirely
willing, when he had no customers, to let Utta lounge on one of
his sofas and inspect embroideries to her heart's content. So
lounging, rapt in the contemplation of Egyptian appliqu‚s, Syrian
gold-thread borders, Spanish linen-work, silk flower patterns from
Cos, Parthian animal designs and Celtic cord-labyrinths after
originals in leather thongs, Utta could glance up from time to time
and make sure that her charge was safe with the sieve-maker.

Safe she would have been without any maid to watch her, for old
Truttidius adored her. He was a small, hale, merry, wizened man, his
seamed and wrinkled face brown as berry in spite of his lifelong habit
of indoor labor and comparative inertia. He had more than a little tact
and was an excellent listener. Brinnaria was entirely at ease with him.

His shop was rather large for those days, nearly fifteen feet wide and
fully twenty deep. It faced directly on the street, from which it was
separated only by the stone counter which occupied all the front except
a narrow entrance at one side. Above the counter projected the heavy
shutters which closed the shop at night and which, being hinged at the
top, were by day pushed upward and outward so as to form a sort of
pent like a wooden substitute for an awning. The entrance by the end
of the counter was closed by a solid little gate. Behind the counter
was the low stool from which Truttidius rose to chaffer with
customers, and on which, when not occupied in trading, he sat at
work, his bench and brazier by his side, his tools hanging on the
wall by his hand, orderly in their neat racks or on their neat
rows of hooks. Except for the trifling wall-space which they occupied,
the walls were hidden under sieves hanging close together; bronze
sieves, copper sieves, rush sieves with rims of white willow wood,
white horse-hair sieves whose hoops were stout ash, sieves of black
horse-hair stretched in rims of clean steamed oak and linen sieves
hooped about with birch. Sieves were piled on the counter, mostly
fancy sieves with hoops of carved wood strung with black and white
horse-hair interlaced in bold patterns, or copper sieves, polished
till they shone, they being most likely to catch the eyes of the
passing throng.

Brinnaria, sprawled on the sofa against the wall behind the
work-bench, surveyed her surroundings and sighed happily,
entirely at home. Truttidius was beating copper wire, a process
always fascinating to watch.

"I've had an awful time in the country with Aunt Septima,"
Brinnaria chatted, "and I had an awful scare before they sent
me to the country. Daddy threatened to make me a Vestal."

"In place of Rabulla?" Truttidius queried, glancing up.

"Yes," Brinnaria answered, "but I got off; my, but I was scared
though."

"You didn't want to be a Vestal?" Truttidius asked, eyeing her
over his work.

"Not I!" Brinnaria declared. "I can't think of anything worse
except being killed."

"Well," mused Truttidius, "there is no accounting for tastes. Most
girls would be wild with delight at the idea. But there would be
no sense in being a Vestal unless you wanted to be one."

"I don't," Brinnaria proclaimed emphatically, "but I have been
thinking about Vestals ever since Daddy threatened me and scared
me so; I've been thinking about Vestals and sieves. Did anybody
ever really carry water in a sieve, Truttidius?"

"Water in a sieve?" the old man exclaimed. "Not anybody that ever
I saw. What do you mean?"

"You must have heard the story of Tuccia, the Vestal," Brinnaria
wondered, wide-eyed. "She lived ages ago, before Hannibal invaded
Italy, when everything was different. They said she was bad and she
said it was a lie and they said she could not prove it was a lie and
she said she could. She said if she was all she ought to be the
Goddess would show it by answering her prayer. And she took a sieve
and walked down to the river, right by the end of the Sublician
bridge, where the stairs are on the right-hand side. And the five
other Vestals, and the flamens, and all the priests, and the Pontifex,
and the consuls went with her. And she stood on the lowest step
with her toes in the water and prayed out loud to the Goddess to
help her and show that she had told the truth and then she stooped
over and dipped up water with her sacrificing ladle and poured it
into the sieve and it didn't run through, and she dipped up more
and more until the sieve was half full of water, as if it had been
a pan. And then she hung her ladle at her girdle-hook and took
the sieve in both hands and carried the water all the way to the
temple. And everybody said that that proved that she had told
the truth.

"That's the story. Had you ever heard it?"

"Yes, little lady," Truttidius said, "I have heard it."

"What I want to know," Brinnaria pursued, "is this:
Is it a made-up story or is it a true story P"

Little lady," spoke Truttidius, "it is impious to
doubt the truth of pious stories handed down from days
of old."

"That isn't answering my question," said the practical Brinnaria.
"What I want you to tell me is to say right out plain do you believe
it. Did anybody really ever carry water in a sieve?"

"You must remember, dear little lady," the sieve-maker said,
"that she was a most holy priestess, most pleasing in the eyes
of her Goddess, that she was in dire straits and that she prayed
to the Goddess to aid her. The Goddess helped her votary; the
gods can do all things."

"The gods can do all things," Brinnaria echoed, her eyes flashing,
"but the gods don't do all things, not even for their favorites.
There are lots and lots of things no god ever did for any votary
or ever will. What I want to know is this: Is carrying water in a
sieve one of the things the gods not only can do but do do? Did
anybody ever carry water in a sieve truly?"

Truttidius smiled, his wrinkles doubling and quadrupling till
his face was all a network of tiny folds of hard, dry skin. He
put down his work and regarded his guest, his face serious after
the fading of his brief smile. The soft-footed sandalled throng
that packed the narrow street shuffled and padded by unnoticed.
No customer interrupted them. They might have been alone in a
Sibyl's cell on a mountain side.

"Little lady," spoke the sieve-maker, "you are, indeed, very old
for your age, not only in height and build, but in heart and mind.
What other child would bother her head about so subtle a problem?
What other child would perceive the verity at the heart of the puzzle
and put it so neatly in so few words? To you an old man cannot help
talking as to an experienced matron, because to you an old man can
talk as to a woman of sense. You deserve to be answered in the
spirit of the question."

He reflected. Brinnaria, fascinated and curious, hardly breathed
in her intentness, watching his face and waiting for his answer.

"Little lady," he said, after a long silence, "the gods can, indeed,
do all things. But as you have yourself perceived the gods do not
do all things, even for their favorites. The gods work miracles to
vindicate their votaries, but as you divine, each miracle is the
happening by the special ordinance of the gods of what might happen
even without their mandate, but which does not happen because it is
only once in countless ages that all the circumstances necessary to
bring about that sort of happening concur to produce so unusual
an effect. What folks call a miracle is the occurrence, by the
beneficent will of heaven, at just the right time and place, of what
might happen anywhere to any one, but almost never does happen
anywhere to any one, because it is so unlikely that all things
should conspire to bring about so unlikely a result.

"So of carrying water in a sieve.

"Anybody might carry water in a sieve any day. But very seldom,
oh, very, very seldom can it come to pass that the kind of person
capable of carrying water in a sieve can be just in the condition
of muscle and mood to do so and can at just that moment be in
possession of just the kind of sieve that will hold water and not
let it through. For an actual breathing woman of flesh and blood
to carry water in a real ordinary sieve of rush-fibres, or linen
thread or horsehair or metal wire, in such a sieve as pastry-cooks
use to sift their finest flour; for that to happen in broad daylight
under the open sky before a crowd of onlookers, that requires the
special intervention of the blessed gods, or of the most powerful
of them. And not even all of them together could make that happen
to a woman of ordinary quality of hand and eye, with a usual sieve,
as most sieves are."

"Explain!" Brinnaria half whispered, "what kind of woman could
actually carry water in a sieve and in what kind of a sieve, and
under what circumstances?"

"That's three questions," Truttidius counted, "and one at a time is
enough.

"In the first place, no god, not all the gods together, could give
any votary power to carry water in a sieve, be it rush or linen or
horse-hair or metal, of which the meshes had been first scrubbed
with natron or embalmers' salt or wood-ashes or fullers' earth.
Water would run through such a sieve, did even all the gods will
that it be retained. No one ever dipped a sieve into water and
brought it up with water in it and saw that water retained by the
meshes. Once wet the under side of a sieve and water will run
through to the last drop.

"But if a sieve were ever so little greasy or oily, not dripping
with oil or clogged with grease, but greasy as a working slave's
finger is greasy on a hot day; if such a sieve were free of any
drop of water on the underside, if into such a sieve water were
slowly and carefully poured, as you say that Tuccia in the story
ladled water into her sieve with her libation-dipper, then that
water might spread evenly over the meshes to the rim all around,
might deepen till it was as deep as the width of two fingers or of
three, and might be retained by the meshes even for an hour, even
while the sieve was carried over a rough road, up hill and down,
through crowded streets.

"But few are the women who could so carry a sieve of water or could
even so hold it that the water would not run through at once."

"How could the water be retained at all?" queried Brinnaria the
practical. "What is the explanation?"

Truttidius wrinkled up his face in deep thought.

"You have seen wine spilled at dinner," he illustrated. "You have
seen a drop of it or a splash of it fall on a sofa-cover, and you
have seen it soak in and leave an ugly stain?"

"Of course," Brinnaria agreed, "often and often."

"And then again, not very often," the sieve-maker went on, "you
see a patch of spilt wine stand up on a perfectly dry fabric and
remain there awhile without soaking in, its surface shining wet
and its edges gleaming round and smooth and curved, bright as a
star. Well, the retaining of water in a sieve by the open meshes
is like the momentary holding up of spilt wine on a woven fabric.
I can't explain any better, but the two happenings are similar,
only the not soaking in of the splashed liquid is far, oh, far more
frequent, countless, uncountable times more frequent, than
the sustaining of fluid in a sieve. But as the one can happen and
does, so the other could happen and might."

"I see," Brinnaria breathed. "You have made me see that. Now,
next point: How must the sieve be held?"

The old man smiled again.

"You keep close to the subject," he chuckled. "You talk like a
grandmother of consuls. You have a head on your shoulders."

"That does not answer my question," Brinnaria persisted.

"Your question is easily answered," he said. "For the miracle to
happen, in fact, the sieve must be held as level as the top rail of
a mason's T-shaped plumb-line frame, and as steady as if clamped
in a vise. For a woman to carry water in a sieve the weather must
be dry, for in damp weather the water would run through the meshes,
even if the threads or wires were just oily enough and not too oily,
even if the meshes were just the right size to favor the forming in
each mesh of a little pocket of water underneath, like the edges of
the upstanding drop of wine on a sofa-cushion. I don't know how
it comes to pass, but somehow, if all the conditions are right, little
bags of water form on the underside of a sieve, one to each mesh,
like drops after a rain hanging from the edge of my shop-shutters,
or from the mutules on the cornice of a temple. They are capable
of sustaining one or even two finger-thicknesses of water on the
upper side of the sieve-web. But if the sieve-web is unevenly woven
or unevenly stretched, it will not retain water an instant, and if the
sieve-web bags anywhere the water, even if the rest of the sieve-web
promises to retain it, will run through at that point. And even if
the sieve is perfect, the slightest tilt, the very slightest tilt, will
cause the little bags of water to break at the lowest point, and
so start all the water to running through. I know; I have tried; I
have seen the sieve hold up the water for some breaths. But for
the marvel to last any length of time, that would require the
intervention of the gods; that would be a miracle. For a woman
to hold a sieve so that it would retain water would mean that her
hand was as steady as the hand of a sleep-walker or of the priestess
of Isis in her trance in the great yearly mystery-festival. That
could happen seldom to any woman; such a woman would be rare."

"I see," Brinnaria barely whispered, so intent was she on the old
man's words. "Now, what kind of woman could do such a wonder?"

"A very exceptional and unusual kind of woman," the old man
declared. "Women, the run of them, are not steady-handed.
Even steady-handed women are easily distracted, their attention
is readily called away from any definite task. Even a woman usually
steady-handed would find her hand tremble if she were conscious
of guilt, even a woman high-hearted with her sense of her own
worthiness might glance aside at some one in a great crowd of
people about her, might let her thoughts wander.

"That is where the miracle would come in. Only a woman directly
favored by the mighty gods could so ignore the throng about her,
could so forget herself, could so concentrate all her faculties on
the receptacle she held, could so perfectly control her muscles or
could so completely let her muscles act undisturbed by her will,
could possess muscles capable of so long tension at so perfect
an adjustment."

"I see," Brinnaria sighed. "The thing may have happened in fact,
may happen again, but it could happen only once out of ten times
ten thousand times ten thousand chances. I understand. It is a
possibility in the ordinary course of events. It was a miracle if it
ever took place; it will be a miracle if it ever comes to pass again.
It is not impossible, but it's too improbable for anybody to believe
it could be, in fact."

"You have it," the sieve-maker assured her.

"I'm glad I have," she said. "Now it'll go out of my head and quit
bothering me. I've thought about it day and night ever since
Daddy threatened me. Now I'll forget it and sleep sound."


Chapter III - Stuttering



When Brinnaria returned from her outing she found waiting for her
her best friend, chum and crony, Flexinna, a girl four years older,
not so tall, decidedly more slender and much prettier. Brinnaria
was robustly handsome; Flexinna was delicately lovely, yet they
did not differ much in tints of hair, eyes or skin and might have
been sisters. In fact, they were not infrequently taken for sisters.

They chatted of their girlish interests and of local gossip and
family news, like any pair of girls, until Brinnaria described the
escapade that led to her rustication.

Flexinna's eyes were wide and wider as she listened.

"D-d-do-you really m-m-mean," she stuttered, "that you had a
c-c-chance to be a V-V-Vestal and d-d-didn't jump at it?"

"Jump at it!" exclaimed Brinnaria. "I jumped away from it! I
can't think of anything, except death, that would fill me with
more horror than the very idea of being made a Vestal. It makes
me shiver now just to speak of it."

"You're a f-f-fool," Flexinna declared, "the f-f-foolest kind of
a f-f-fool. This is the f-f-first f-f-foolish thing I ever knew you
to d-d-do. I always th-th-thought you s-s-so s-s-sensible, t-t-too.
And you've m-m-missed a ch-ch-chance to be a V-V-Vestal. I've
n-n-no p-p-patience with you. Any other g-g-girl would j-j-jump
at the ch-ch-chance."

"Jump at it!" cried Brinnaria. "Why?"

"Why?" sneered Flexinna, blazing with excitement. "Why, just think
what you've m-m-missed! You're as wild as I am to see
g-g-gladiators fight, k-k-keener than I am to see a real horse-race
in the circus, and you'll have to wait until you're g-g-grown up,
as I'll have to, before you s-s-see either. And you'd have g-g-gone
to every spectacle, from the very day you were t-t-taken, and not
have m-m-missed one. Think of it! F-F-Front seats in the circus,
front seats in the amphitheatre, all your life, or for thirty years
at least, for certain! And you've m-m-missed it. And that's not
half. Your lictor to c-c-clear the way for you whenever you g-g-go
out and your choice to g-g-go out in your litter with eight
b-b-bearers or in your c-c-carriage, your own c-c-carriage, all
your own, and the right to d-d-drive any where in the city any
d-d-day in the year. Oh, you f-f-fool, you s-s-silly f-f-fool!
A ch-ch-chance to be one of the s-s-seven m-m-most imp-p-portant
women in Rome, one of the s-s-six who are on a level with the
Empress, and you m-m-missed it! Fancy it; to b-b-be mistress of
an income so large that it m-m-makes you d-d-dizzy to think of it,
and you throw away the ch-ch-chance! To be able the m-m-moment
you were taken, to m-m-make your own w-w-will! To have every
legacy c-c-cadger in Rome running after you and m-m-making you
p-p-presents and d-d-doing you favors and angling for your n-n-notice
all your 1-l-life 1-1-long, and you m-m-miss the ch-ch-chance!"

"Yes," Brinnaria admitted, reflectively, "I have missed all that,
that's so. But that's not all there is to think of, when you think
about being a Vestal. I've missed a lot of fine privileges, mighty
valuable to any girl that would care for that sort of thing; but I've
escaped a lot of things that would go with those privileges. I love
bright colors, I always did and I look ghastly in white--I look like
a ghost. And I'd have had to wear white and nothing else, even
white flowers, like a corpse. And a Vestal has to keep her eyes on
the ground and walk slow and stately and stand straight and
dignified, and talk soft and low. I'd suffer, even if I could learn
all the tricks they teach them as well as Gargilia has. And I don't
believe I ever could. I'd keep my eyes cast down for a month or a
year and then, right in the middle of a sacrifice, I'd see something
funny, like the gander squawking under the feet of the pall-bearers
at poor old Gibba's funeral at the farm last summer, and I'd wink
at the head Vestal or roll my eyes at the whole congregation and
spoil the prayers; or, after keeping meek and mum for a year or so
I'd be so wild to laugh that I'd roar right out and break up the
whole service. I think I'm the last girl alive to be a Vestal. A
Vestal mustn't answer back or make a pun, no matter how good a
chance she gets. I just can't help cutting in, if I see a chance;
the words come out of my mouth before I know it, and, if I trained
myself to keep still and look as mild as a lamb, I'd be boiling
inside and sometime I'd burst out with a yell just to relieve my
feelings or I'd jab a shawl-pin into the Pontifex to see him jump,
or put out my toe and trip up somebody just to see him sprawl.
I couldn't help it. The more I'd bottle myself up the farther the
naughtiness in me would spurt when it burst through the skin.
I know. No Vestaling for me! I wasn't born for that trade!"

"Nonsense!" Flexinna disclaimed vigorously. "You'd g-g-get used
to the whole thing in a m-m-month and be the most s-s-statuesque
of the six in t-t-ten years. Think of it! I'm just raging inside at your
f-f-folly. To have the right to an interview with the Emperor
whenever you d-d-demand it, to see the m-m-magistrates' lictors
lower their fasces to you and s-s-stand aside at the s-s-salute and
let you p-p-pass whenever you m-m-meet them in p-p-public. To
live in one of the finest p-p-palaces in Rome, one of the most
m-m-magnificent residences on earth, to have the ch-ch-chance
at all that and m-m-miss it; I've no p-p-patience with you!"

"That's all very fine," Brinnaria countered, "but there's much to
be said on the other side. I've been in the Atrium. Aunt Septima
took me there to call on Causidiena. It's big, it's gorgeous, it's
luxurious, that's all true. But I love sunlight. I'd loathe living
in that hole in the ground; why, the shadow of the Palace falls
across the courtyard before noon and for all the rest of the day
it's gloomy as the bottom of a well. I heard Causidiena tell Aunt
Septima how shoes mould and embroideries mildew and what a time
they have with the inlays popping off the furniture on account of the
dampness and about the walls and lamp-standards sweating moisture.
I'd hate the dark, poky, cold place."

"Oh," Flexinna admitted, "there are d-d-drawbacks to any
s-s-situation in life, but, really the higher the s-s-station the
fewer the drawbacks. The p-p-plain truth is that being a Vestal
is the highest s-s-station in Rome except being an Empress. No
g-g-girl dare aspire to be an Empress; it would be treason. If any
g-g-girl d-d-dreams of it she k-k-keeps her d-d-dreams to herself.
But any g-g-girl has a right to aspire to be a Vestal, if she is
made perfect and is under ten and has her f-f-father and m-m-mother
noble and alive. You've got all that and you are offered what any
g-g-girl would envy you and you throw it away! I've no patience
with you."

"You forget," Brinnaria argued, "that I'm in love with Almo and
I'd have to give up Almo."

"Not f-f-forever," Flexinna retorted. "He's enough in love with
you to wait for you, to wait for you! You could have pledged him
to wait till your term of service was up and then you two could
have married just the same."

"Just the same!" Brinnaria echoed. "A lot of good it'd do me to
marry after I'd be an old wrinkled, gray-haired woman of forty,
dried up and withered."

"Nemestronia," Flexinna cited, "has married twice since she was
forty, and she's not withered yet, not by a great deal, even if she
is gray-haired and has a wrinkle or two."

"What's the use of arguing," Brinnaria summed up. "I hate the very
idea of being a Vestal. I'd hate the fact a million times more. I'd
hate it even if I were not in love with Almo, furiously in love
with Almo. Daddy says I've got to wait four years to marry him.
I roll around in bed and bite the pillows with rage to think of it,
night after night. A fine figure I'd cut trying to wait thirty
years for him. I'd swoon with longing for him and write him a note
or peep out of the temple to see him go by and then I'd get accused
of misbehavior, and accused is convicted for a Vestal; well, you
know it. I'd look fine being buried alive in a seven-by-five
underground stone cell, with half a pint of milk and a gill of wine
to keep me alive long enough to suffer before I starved to death
and a thimbleful of oil in a lamp to make me more scared of the
dark when the lamp burned out. No burial alive for me. I'm in
love. I'm too much in love to balance arguments. I'm not sorry I
missed my chance, as you call it. I'm glad I escaped; the chance
isn't missed for that matter. Rabulla's place hasn't been filled yet."

"Do you know who is g-g-going to be ch-ch-chosen to fill it?"
Flexinna asked. "You d-d-don't? The choice has about narrowed
d-d-down to that execrable, weasel-faced little M-M-Meffia."

"Meffia!" Brinnaria cried. "There's no one alive I despise as much
as that detestable ninny. I've a mind to chuck Almo and ask Daddy
to offer me, just to spite Meffia."

"Why d-d-don't you?" Flexinna stuttered. "D-d-do it n-n-now, right
n-n-now. You might be t-t-too late."

"Oh bosh," Brinnaria groaned. "What's the use of talking nonsense?
What would be the sense in my spoiling my life to spite Meffia? I
hate her. I'll hate to see her putting on airs as a Vestal, but I'd
hate worse to be a Vestal myself, and worst of all to lose Almo. I
just couldn't give up Almo."

"I wish I were you," Flexinna raged. "If I were only under ten and
d-d-didn't s-s-stutter, I'd d-d-do all I c-c-could to g-g-get
D-D-Daddy to offer m-m-me."

"Bosh!" Brinnaria sneered. "You're in love with Vocco and you
know you wouldn't even think of giving him up if you had the chance."

"Just wouldn't I!" Flexinna retorted. "I love Quintus dearly. But
if I had a ch-ch-chance to be a V-V-Vestal, I'd fling poor Quintus
hard and never regret him. Not I. Think of the influence a V-V-Vestal
has! Every man who wants p-p-promotion in the army or in the
fleet, or who wants an appointment to any office would set his
sisters and all his women relations to besieging me to use my
influence for him. Every temple-carver and shrine-painter in Rome
would have his wife showing me attentions. I know; I've heard
the talk.

"And b-b-besides, in all the Empire a Vestal is the nearest thing
to a p-p-princess we have. We read a lot about Egyptian princesses,
and Asiatic princesses and we hear about P-P-Parthian
p-p-princesses, but the only p-p-princesses we ever see are the
Vestals. They are the only p-p-princesses in the Empire, in Italy,
in Rome, the six of them. And you had a chance to be one of the
only six p-p-princesses in our world and you didn't take it. Oh,
you f-f-fool, you f-f-fool!"

They wrangled about their conflicting views for a long time.

It was only as Flexinna was leaving that she inquired casually:

"Have you heard what Rabulla d-d-died of?"

"No," said Brinnaria. "what was it?"

"Hadn't you heard?" Flexinna wondered. "It was the p-p-pestilence."


Chapter IV - Pestilence



Pestilence!

Brinnaria heard the word often during the next few days. Rome
talked of little else. It had begun with a few deaths along the
river front in the sailors' quarters, and among the stevedores
and porters of the grain-warehouses, southwest of the Aventine
Hill in the thirteenth ward. Next it came to notice when there
were many deaths along the Subura in the very centre of the city.
>From there the infection had spread to every wind. Panic seized
the people. There was an exodus of all who could afford it, to
their country estates, to the mountains, to the seaside. Brinnarius
and Quartilla discussed arrangements for their departure to his
mountain farm in the Sabine hills above Carsioli. Their difficulty
was to decide to whom to commit their great house in Rome. They
had no slave whom they implicitly trusted, and no one certainly
who would be willing to stay in the city. To close the house was
to invite burglary, for in the general panic watchmen were
unreliable and house-breakings were frequent. Into their
consultation Brinnaria thrust herself uninvited.

"Why don't you leave me in town?" she suggested.  "I hate the
country and I hate it near Carsioli worse than any neighborhood
I ever saw. I want to stay right here. I love Rome. And I'm not
afraid of pestilence. Nobody can die more than once and nobody
dies till the gods will it. There's more danger of dying of fright
and worry than of pestilence. Anyhow a pestilence never kills all
the people in a city, most of the towns- folk stay right at home
and keep alive all right. Half the people that die scare or fret
themselves to death. I won't fret or worry and I'll keep well here;
but if you take me with you I'll be miserable and chafe myself ill.
 I can run the house as well as mother can. Most of the slaves
worship me and will obey me for love, the rest are deadly afraid
of me and will not dare to disobey me. I'll keep order and I will
not waste a sesterce. Can't I stay, Father?"

Brinnarius knit his brows and looked at his wife. Her eyes
answered his.

"It would save a deal of trouble," he said, reflectively.

"It would make a deal of gossip," Quartilla declared. "All my
enemies would say that I am an unnatural mother, that I do not
love my youngest child, that I hate her, that I am exposing her
to certain death, that I am as bad as a murderess."

"Nonsense!" her husband retorted. "We can't bother about all the
malice of all the slanderers in Rome. Other people's daughters are
remaining. Lucconius means to stay here in Rome with his family.
If he ventures to keep Flexinna here we might venture to leave
Brinnaria behind."

"You might," that self-assertive child cut in, "and you know there
is really no use in taking me if I do not want to go. You know
how much trouble it will make for both of you."

Quartilla sighed.

"Perhaps we had best leave her," she said. "Certainly the house
will be safe and the slaves kept in order. I shan't have an
instant's anxiety about that. Then Brinnaria is so genuinely
brave that she will really not dread the pestilence, and all the
doctors say that there is nothing like that feeling to protect any
one from the danger. She makes me feel that she will be safe. I
don't believe I'll worry about that either."

"Fine!" Brinnaria squealed. "I'm to stay."

"Not so fast," her father rebuked her. "I haven't said yet that
you may stay. But if I say so, then you must stay. I'll not have
you changing your mind and deciding to leave Rome after we have
arranged to put you in charge here. It would make trouble indeed
to have you shutting up this house in a hurry and chasing after
us to Carsioli."

"Epulo!" his wife reproached him, "the child has her faults,
but changeableness is not one of them. She is the most resolute
child I ever knew. If you leave her, she will not fail us. If
she gives her word she will keep it. I never knew Brinnaria to
break an earnestly made promise."

"Will you promise?" her father asked her.

"I promise," Brinnaria shouted, "I pledge myself. I take oath.
I swear by my love of both of you, by my respect for our clan, by
my hopes of marrying Almo, that I'll stick it out here in Rome,
going out only when necessary, unless you send for me to come
away. If anything happens that makes me think I ought to leave
the city I shall send a message to you, but I shall not cross
the city boundaries nor relax my watch on this house without your
permission. I swear."

"That's enough, dearie," her father said, "enough and too much. If
your judgment tells you that you ought to flee from Rome, you have
my permission to send me a messenger; I know you will not resort to
that without real need. I rely on your judgment. The gods be with you,
child. You have taken a load of my shoulders, two loads, in fact."

Thereupon preparations for departure were pushed and soon after
sunrise on the next day Brinnaria found herself left to her own
resources, responsible for the welfare of a large retinue of
obsequious slaves, autocrat over them, and mistress of one of the
 largest private houses in Rome. She acquitted herself well of
her duties. She had been right in claiming that she was loved by
most and feared by the rest. Certainly she was trusted and respected
by all as if she had been five times her age. She made them as
comfortable as town-slaves could be and they knew it. To her they
accorded instant and implicit obedience. The life of the household
went on as smoothly as if the master had been at home. And its life
was not gloomy. Although the main subject of conversation was the
 pestilence, open forebodings were not indulged in and the house was
 outwardly cheerful.

Equally cheerful was Flexinna, whom Brinnaria saw daily. Neither of
them had the slightest fear of the pestilence and no member of
either household had shown the slightest symptoms of any kind of
 illness. Of the daily deaths among their large acquaintance or
among the nobilities of the city, they talked calmly, without any
 feeling of gloom or of dread, secure in the confidence of youth
and health.

On the tenth day after Brinnaria had been left to her own devices
 Flexinna visited her as usual. Early in their talk she said:

"D-D-Dossonia died last night."

"The Chief Vestal?" Brinnaria queried.

"Yes," Flexinna replied, a bright tear in each eye.

"She couldn't live forever," Brinnaria said. "She was ninety-four,
 wasn't she?"

"Ninety-four years and eight months yesterday," Flexinna replied.
"She had been Chief Vestal ever since C-C-Calpurnia P-P-Praetextata
 died, and that's fifty- six years ago. She had been Chief Vestal
longer than any ever and she had lived longer than any Vestal ever."

"Well," said Brinnaria, the practical, "she ought to have been
glad to go, and she stone blind for twenty years."

"Yes, I know," Flexinna rejoined, "but she was such an old d-d-dear,
she looked so much younger than her age, her face so healthy and
pink, and b-b-beautiful even with all its wrinkles, so calm and
placid and holy I loved to look at her sitting in her big chair
like a great white b-b-butterfly, so plump and handsome and soft-
looking. She always put out her hand to my face and recognized me
at the first t-t-touch, almost, and gave me her blessing so
b-b-beautifully. Sometimes Manlia let me read to the old dear,
and she always seemed to enjoy it so much. I'm real shaken at her
d-d-death. I really loved her."

"Everybody loved her," Brinnaria declared. "But everybody loves
 Causidiena too, and she's Chief Vestal now. She's not fat and
placid like Dossonia, but she is wonderfully dignified. My, I
admire that woman!"

"I wonder," Flexinna reflected, "who will be chosen in her p-p-place."

"Poor wretch!" Brinnaria commented. "I'm sorry for her, whoever
she is. Just think, she'll have to pair with that unspeakable
little muff of a Meffia. I hate that girl."

"Whoever she is," Flexinna continued, "she is sure to be chosen
and taken mighty quick. For with this p-p-pestilence in the city,
and all the trouble the P-P-Parthians are making in the East, of
the Marcomanni on the Rhine colonies, and the thunder-storms that
have raged about lately, there'll be need felt for all the p-p-prayers
 all the offer. They'll not leave the vacancy open long. I'll bet they
 have it filled by d-d-day after to-morrow. Old B-B-Bambilio is a
stickler for pious precision an observance of all ritual matters
and the Emperors are with him."

"Marcus is," Brinnaria agreed, pertly, "but Lucius doesn't care
what happens so long as he has his fun."

"You mustn't t-t-t-talk that way about the Emperors,"  Flexinna
 cautioned her. "If you were overheard you'd get into no end of
trouble. Anyhow, Verus defers to Aurelius in everything, so that
 whatever Aurelius wishes is as if both wished it. And there never
was a more p-p-pious Emperor than Aurelius. So the place is
certain to be filled p-p-promptly."

"At once, for sure," Brinnaria agreed. "I wonder who the victim
will be? Do you suppose it will be Occurnea?"

"It would have been Occurnea, I think," Flexinna said. "You know
it was a chance for a while whether she'd get it instead of Meffia.
But she's not eligible now. Her mother d-d-died yesterday."

"Tallentia, perhaps," Brinnaria hazarded.

"Impossible," Flexinna declared. "You remember how recklessly
she rode and how her horse f-f-fell on her. She has limped ever
since and always will."

"Cuppiena?" suggested Brinnaria.

"Not she," said Flexinna; "she has some k-k-kind of skin rash and
has lost almost all her hair."

"Sabbia," Brinnaria proposed.

"Her mother's d-d-dead too," Flexinna reminded her; "has been for
 months."

"Fremnia," came the next suggestion.

"She's off to Aquileia with her family," said Flexinna;  "they
all left the d-d-day your folks went."

"Eppia," ventured Brinnaria.

"She's ten years old now," Flexinna demurred. "She celebrated
her b-b-birthday three days before the Kalends. I was at the party."

"Pennasia, perhaps," Brinnaria suggested.

"D-d-deaf in one ear like her mother and grandmother," said
Flexinna, "and you know it."

"Licinia," Brinnaria ventured.

"She'd be the last they'd choose on account of the b-b-bad luck
Vestals of her family have had;" Flexinna reminded her. "The
very name suggests disgrace. Anyhow, she's in Baiae with her
p-p-people."

"Rentulana," came the next conjecture.

"Has a b-b-big wen on the side of her head," Flexinna proclaimed.

"Numledia?" came next.

"You've lost your memory, Brinnaria," said Flexinna, severely.
"She's got a b-b-big purple birthmark on her neck."

"Magnonia," Brinnaria proposed.

"She's far away, in Britain, with her father and mother; might as
well be out of the world."

Brinnaria was at a loss. She meditated. "Gavinna!" she said at
last.

"She has a bad squint and you know it," laughed Flexinna. "Why
don't you think of an eligible c-c-candidate?"

They tried a dozen more names, all of girls out of the city or
defective in some way, or with one parent dead.

"But who will it be?" Brinnaria wondered. "It's bound to be
somebody and quick."

She jumped to her feet.

She screamed.

"They'll take me! They'll take me! Oh, what am I to do, what am I
to do? I'm the only possible candidate in the city. And they'll be
after me the moment they run over the lists and find no one else
is in town."

She stood a moment, considering, then she called Guntello, and a
lean Caledonian slave called Intinco. She gave them each a
written journey-order to show to any patrol that questioned them, told
Guntello to take the best horse in the stable and to give the
next best to Intinco, bade Intinco ride to Carsioli and Guntello
to  Falerii, gave Guntello a letter for Almo and Intinco a letter
to her father and told them verbally, in case the letter was lost,
to make it plain that she was in danger of being taken for a Vestal
and bid her father come quickly to interfere and her lover to ride
fast to claim her in time. She enjoined both slaves to spur their
 horses, gave them money in case they needed to hire fresh mounts
and wound up:

"Kill Rhaebus, kill Xanthus, kill as many hired horses as need be,
ride without halt or mercy. Get there and get father and Almo here.
Be quick. You can't be too quick."

She watched them ride off at a sedate walk, for no man was allowed
to trot a horse in the streets of Rome. Both had assured her that
they would ride at full gallop from the moment they passed the gates.

Then began for Brinnaria a tense and anxious period of waiting.
Flexinna obtained her parents' permission and remained with her
friend. The entire household continued in good health and there
was nothing to distract t he two from their dread on the one hand
that the Pontifex might come to claim Brinnaria before Almo and her
 father arrived, and their hope on the other hand of seeing them
come in time.

On the whole the strain told on Flexinna more than on Brinnaria,
 who never once shed a tear, attended to her housewifely duties
calmly and steadily and talked little. Flexinna fidgeted constantly
and talked a good deal.

"If I were in your place," she said, "I shouldn't be waiting here
inertly for Faltonius to come and claim me. Instead of dispatching
messengers for your father and Almo, you ought to have left the
city at once and made your best speed for Carsioli yourself."

"I couldn't," Brinnaria declared, "and you know why. I passed my
word to stay in this house and not so much as to go out unless
some compelling necessity arose. I pledged myself not to leave here
 unless I sent a messenger saying I needed to leave and received
permission before I started. I took my oath not to cross the city
 limits without Father's consent. I can't break my oath and I
shouldn't break my word, even if I hadn't sworn in addition to
promising."

"You f-f-fool!" Flexinna declared.

"All members of our clan keep their word," said Brinnaria proudly.
"We do not ask whether it is advantageous to keep our word or
pleasant; when we have passed our word we keep it. I've given my
word and there's nothing to do but to wait for Almo and Daddy and
hope that both, or at least a message from Daddy will get here
before Faltonius."

"There is something else you might do," Flexinna suggested. "You
might easily arrange to be ineligible before Bambilio comes for
you."

"I shall," spoke the matter-of-fact Brinnaria. "The moment Daddy
and Almo come, I'll be Alma's wife in less time than it takes
to tell it and will be able to snap my fingers at Bambilio."

"Suppose he comes before your father," Flexinna suggested.

"I'd be a Vestal and all hope gone," said Brinnaria,

"I mean," said Flexinna, "suppose Almo comes before your father."

"I've thought of that," Brinnaria admitted. "But I'd hate to break
the record of which our family is so proud. None of our women
ever were so much as accused of any  misbehavior before marriage."

"I've no p-p-patience with you," Flexinna raged. 'You'll throw
away your life for a mere scruple. You risk being made a Vestal
every moment. Faltonius may be on the way here now. If I were
in your place I'd make sure. I'd not wait for Almo. Any lad would
do for me. You c-c-could make sure, if you had sense. Almo would
forgive you and marry you anyway. Your father would forgive you;
he'd never approve, I know."

"Not he!" Brinnaria proclaimed, "and he'll never have any such
dishonor to forgive. No man of our clan ever had reason to be
ashamed of his daughter or of his sister. I'll not be the first
to disgrace the clan. If Faltonius comes he'll find me as eligible
as the hour I was born, unless Daddy and Almo come in time for me
to be married first."

"At least," Flexinna persisted, "you might say no when he asks you.
That would stall the whole ceremony and give you t-t-time."

"Do you suppose," Brinnaria sneered, "that I haven't thought of
that? I'm tempted, of course. But that would be to advertise
myself a disgrace to the Pontifex during a solemn interrogatory."

"At least," Flexinna pleaded, "you might say you are over age. You
look sixteen to anybody, and no one would imagine you are under
 fourteen. You could halt the proceedings, at least, and gain
t-t-time."

"Faltonius has the lists," said Brinnaria wearily, "with all the
 birthdays sworn to by both parents for every girl on them and
attested by four excellent witnesses, besides. He'd know I was
lying and it would do me no good."

Flexinna changed the subject.

But when the next day dawned and neither Brinnarius nor Almo
appeared, she returned to the attack. Brinnaria was very pale,
very tense, but obdurate. She controlled herself, did not forget,
did not express her feelings, but she posted a slave at each street
 corner, right and left of the house-door, and had them look out
 for what she hoped and what she feared.

Dastor brought word that the Pontifex and his retinue were
approaching; three litters, each with eight bearers, preceded by
the lictor of the Chief Vestal.

Brinnaria, pale and tense, did her best to look collected and
 controlled. She succeeded well, heard calmly the announcement of
 her august visitors, ordered them shown into the atrium, and
received them with proper dignity. Her self-possession did not
desert her when she recognized in the train of the Pontifex her
rejected suitor Calvaster, sly, malignant and with an air of
suppressed elation.

Faltonius Bambilio, the Pontifex of Vesta, was a pursy, pudgy,
pompous old man, immensely self-important, almost ridiculous in
his fussiness, but clothed with a certain impressiveness by the
mere fact of his religious office. He gazed about him, stared at
Brinnaria, hemmed and hawed and threw himself into poses intended
to be stately.

With him was Causidiena, now Chief Vestal, a tall, spare woman
of about forty-five, her austere face kindly and reassuring, her
dark hair barely showing under her official head-dress, a statuesque
 figure in her white robes of office.

"My daughter," spoke Faltonius to Brinnaria, "Rome has but five
Vestals. I have come to take you into the vacant place. You have
been chosen, as best suited to this high dignity, from among those
whose names were on the lists of those fit for the office. Was it
proper that your name should be on the lists?"

"I believe so," spoke Brinnaria, weakly, almost in a whisper.

"Are you fit to be taken as a Vestal, my daughter?"

"I believe so," came the answer.

"Have you any blemish or defect of body, any impediment of speech,
any difficulty of hearing?"

Brinnaria's awe was wearing off, and the irritating pomposity of
Faltonius was producing its usual effect of arousing antagonism,
as it generally did in those he talked to. Brinnaria felt all her
wild self surge up in her.

"I'm sound as a two-year-old racing filly," she replied. "I'm
clean as fresh curd; I hear you perfectly and you can hear me
 perfectly."

Bambilio bristled like a bantam rooster.

"That is not the way for a Vestal to speak," he rebuked.

"I'm not a Vestal yet," Brinnaria retorted, "and that was my
answer to those questions. If you don't like it I don't care
a shred of bran."

"Come! come!" fussed Bambilio, "answer the interrogatories
properly."

"I have and I shall," Brinnaria maintained mutinously.

"Are you fit in mind and in faculties to be a Vestal?" he continued.

"Fit to be Flaminica or Empress," Brinnaria responded.

"Are you pure?" came the next query.

"As when I was born," said Brinnaria emphatically.

"What is your age?" the Pontifex queried his victim.

"I'll be ten on the Ides of next September," quoth his victim.

"Are your parents both alive?" he asked.

"They were the last time I heard of them," spoke Brinnaria flippantly.

"When was that?" he insisted.

"This is the twelfth day since they left Rome," said Brinnaria,
"and I've not heard from them since they sent a messenger back
from the ninth milestone on the road to Tibur."

Faltonius was irritating her more and more, and she added:

"They may both be dead by this time, for all I know."

"This will not do," spoke Faltonius. "We must be sure that they
are both alive."

"Find out," snapped Brinnaria.

Up spoke young Calvaster, his pasty face alight with a sort of
malicious glee.

"I passed Quartilla's travelling carriage at Varia last night.
Quartilla was alive and well. I passed Brinnarius this morning
at dawn, this side of Tibur. He was alive then and puffing."

"How did you get here ahead of him?" Brinnaria interjected.

"I am light built," Calvaster explained with obvious relish, "and
I rode the best horse in Italy. His mount labored heavily under
his load."

"Both parents are then alive," spoke Faltonius. "I hereupon and
hereby pronounce you in all respects fit to be taken as a Vestal.
Are you willing?"

"Not I!" Brinnaria fairly shouted.

"Not willing!" Faltonius cried, incredulous.

"Not a fibre of me!" she proclaimed emphatically.

"Wretched girl!" expostulated the Pontiff. "Have you no sense of
patriotism? Do you not realize your duty to your country, to the
Roman people, to Rome, to the Emperor, to all of us, to the
commonwealth? Do yon not realize Rome's need of you? Shall it be
said that Rome has need of one of her daughters and that her
 unnatural child refuses?"

"I have not refused," said Brinnaria. "I only said I was unwilling."

"It is the same thing," declared the bewildered ecclesiastic.

"Not a bit the same thing," Brinnaria disclaimed. "I know my duty
in this matter perfectly. Castor be good to me, I know it too well.
I know that a refusal would avail me nothing, if I did refuse. I
have not refused. I would not, even if I could escape by refusal I
realize my duty. If I am taken I shall be all that a Vestal is
expected to be, all that she must be to ensure the glory and
prosperity and safety of the city and the Empire. I shall not
fail the Emperor nor the Roman people, nor Rome. But I am
unwilling, and I said so. Little good it will do me. But I am no
liar, not even in the tightest place."

"Stand up, my daughter," said Faltonius, rising himself, suddenly
 clothed in dignity, a really impressive figure, in spite of his
 globular proportions.

Brinnaria stood, her eyes on the door to the vestibule, her face very
 pale, trembling a little, but controlled.

The Pontifex took her hand and spoke:

"As priestess of Vesta, to perform those rites which it is fitting
that a priestess of Vesta perform for the Roman People and the
citizens, as a girl who has been chosen properly, so I take you,
Beloved."

At the word "Beloved," which made her irretrievably a Vestal,
Brinnaria could not repress a little gasp. Her eyes no longer
watched the vestibule door. She looked at the Pontiff. He let
go her hand.

"You will now go with your servitor to be clothed as befits your
calling."

He indicated one of Causidiena's attendants, a solidly built
woman, like a Tuscan villager, who carried over her arm a mass of
fresh white garments and robes.

With her and Causidiena Brinnaria left the atrium; with them she
 presently returned, a slim white figure, her hair braided and
the six braids wound round her forehead like a coronet, above
them the folds of the plain square headdress of the Vestals.

"I thought," she said, "that my hair would be cut off."

"That will be after you are made at home in the Atrium of Vesta,"
spoke the Pontiff.

"And remember," he continued sternly, "that you are now a Vestal
and that young Vestals may not speak unless spoken to."

Brinnaria bit her lip.

At that moment they heard hoofs and voices outside, the door
burst open and Brinnarius entered.

"Too late, Daddy!" cried Brinnaria. "You can't help me now. I'm
not your little girl any more; I don't count as your daughter;
you don't count as my father; I'm daughter to the Pontifex from
now on. I'm a Vestal."

She was trembling, but she kept her countenance. Brinnarius
uttered no sound, the whole gathering was still and mute, the
noises of the street outside were plainly audible. They heard
horse-hoofs again, again the door flew open wide. In burst Almo,
wide-eyed and panting.

At him Brinnaria launched a sort of shriek of expostulation.

"Why couldn't you ride! You call yourself a horseman! And you've
come too late! I mustn't even kiss you good-bye. And I mustn't
speak to you, I mustn't see you, I mustn't so much as think
of you for thirty years, for thirty years, <for thirty years>!"


CHAPTER V - ESCAPADES



WHEN Brinnaria found herself actually domiciled in the House of
the Vestals she experienced an odd mingling of awe and elation.
The mere size of it was impressive, for it was nearly two hundred
feet wide and almost four hundred feet long. Also it stood alone,
bounded by four streets. Besides, it gained much dignity from its
location, near the southeast corner of the great Forum of Rome, that
most famous of all city squares, and under the very shadow of the
Imperial Palace, the walls of which towered nearly three hundred feet
above it, where it crouched as it were, on a site scooped out of the
huge flank of the Palatine Hill.

Completely as it was dominated by the enormous bulk of the Palace
it yet looked very large, having three lofty stories. Inside it was both
spacious and stately. Brinnaria was habituated to space and stateliness,
for her father's house had both, yet the Atrium of Vesta, as the House
of the Vestals was officially denominated, impressed her as vast and
splendid. That this immense and magnificent building was to be her home
gave her sense of her own importance that thrilled her through and
through. Its numerous retinue of deft and obsequious maid-servants added
to this impression. Brinnaria's personal attendants, entirely at her
beck and call and serving her alone, made up a considerable retinue by
themselves. She found herself, like each of the other Vestals, served by
a special waitress at table, by a waitress who had nothing to do but
look after her wants. Then she had a sort of maid-of-honor, who had no
duties except to act as companion, make herself agreeable, read aloud,
if requested, accompany her on her outings and help to pass her leisure
pleasantly. As she was a mere child in years she had a sort of governess
to instruct her in all those subjects in which a Roman girl of good
family was generally given lessons: correct reading; a smattering of
mathematics, about equivalent to the simple arithmetic of our days; some
knowledge of literature; a steady and efficient drill in reading and
talking Greek; instrumental music, similar to the guitar-playing of
modern times, and embroidery. She had a personal maid to bathe her,
arrange her hair and otherwise make her comfortable; also a special maid
to attend to her private apartment, which included what we would call a
sitting-room, a tiny bedroom, and a large bath-room. The largest room
was used mostly as a school-room for lessons with her instructress.
Outside the Atrium Brinnaria had her private stable, her carriages, her
coachman and ostlers, and her lictor, the red-cloaked runner, who
preceded her carriage, announced its coming and cleared the way for it
through the crowds of foot-passengers who thronged the streets of Rome.
Life in the Atrium was austere and formal, but in no respect ascetic.
The austerities extended only to attire and behavior. The decorations of
the courtyard, of the corridors and stairs, of the two hundred rooms,
were bewilderingly varied and overpoweringly gorgeous. Every appointment
of the Atrium was luxurious to the last degree; the furnishings were
beautiful and precious, every object a work of art; the bathrooms
cunningly devised for comfort, the beds deep and soft, scarcely less so
the sofas on which the Vestals reclined at their meals, the table
service of exquisite glass-ware and elaborately chased silver, the food
abundant and including every delicacy and rarity most appetizing and
enjoyable.

Except Meffia her co-Vestals were immediately liked and speedily
loved by Brinnaria. Meffia, a month older than herself and looking six
years younger, was a small, awkward, ungainly girl, with pale blue eyes,
pale yellow hair and babyish pink complexion. She had never had an ill
hour in her life, yet she always appeared ailing, shrank from any
effort, hated exercise and exertion and at every necessity for movement
asserted that she was tired, often that she felt weak. Brinnaria thought
her merely innately lazy and a natural shirk. The more she saw of her
the more her loathing for her and her hatred of her intensified.
Quite the reverse with the others. Manlia was a large young woman of
about twenty-two, a typical Roman aristocrat, her hair between dark
brown and black, her complexion swarthy, her figure abundant. Gargilia
was older than Manlia; a tall, slender creature with intensely black
hair and piercing black eyes that looked straight at you out of a face
healthfully tinted indeed, but of a whiteness which was the envy of half
the beauties in Rome. Numisia Maximilla was much like an older Manlia,
but sparer and of markedly haughty bearing and carriage. Causidiena,
newly become Chief Vestal, was a woman of about forty-five years of age,
mild, gentle, and charming, with cool gray eyes and glossy brown hair, a
being who aroused affection, inspired admiration and compelled love from
all her household.

She won Brinnaria's heart at once by telling her that she herself, when
she had first entered the Atrium of Vesta, had found it difficult to
learn the etiquette of the order, had wanted to shout and sing and laugh
out loud, to run up and down stairs instead of walking, to skip and
jump.

That Causidiena had triumphed over similar tendencies comforted
Brinnaria and helped her to try to overcome her own. Most difficult to
curb was her tendency to be rude to Meffia. This Causidiena noticed at
once and set herself to obliterate. Brinnaria unbosomed herself and
Causidiena listened so sympathetically that Brinnaria sat silent through
the long lecture that followed and was very submissive during a
searching interrogatory. She promised to comport herself as a Vestal
should.

"But," she said, "I shall suffer. That girl is unpleasant in ten
thousand ways, but the smell of her is the most unpleasant thing about
her. She's been tubbed and scrubbed and massaged and perfumed twice a
day ever since I came here and she smells worse than a polecat, anyhow,
all day long, even the moment after her maid has finished her toilet. A
whiff of Meffia sets me frantic. I'd be capable of any crime to get rid
of her."

More lecturing followed.

"But it's true!" Brinnaria maintained. "You can't help smelling her
yourself; she smells like nothing else on earth. It isn't the smell of a
dirty girl or of an ill girl, nor the smell of a girl at all or of any
kind of a human being. I can't describe it, but it's a thin sour smell,
sharp and shrill like the note of a cricket, if a sound and a smell can
be compared. It's horrible; it's not human."

More lecturing, a long session of lecturing, followed this outburst. At
the end of it the victim was meek and pliable, or so professed herself.
For at least five days Brinnaria kept up her effort to be comradely with
Meffia. By the sixth day she was completely exhausted and the two
avoided each other as before.

Agonies indeed Brinnaria suffered in her efforts to live up to
Causidiena's ideas of what she should be. On the whole she succeeded
pretty well and committed few errors of deportment. Outwardly she
controlled herself from the first; for, before her first cowed
sensations had worn off, her adoration of Causidiena had gained full
sway over her. Yet inwardly she suffered more and more acutely as time
went on, partly feeling that she must burst out in spite of herself,
partly dreading that she would.

At last, after many days, she perpetrated her first and most
undignified prank. It was a terrific occurrence, judged by the standards
of the Atrium.

The great peristyle of the House of the Vestals, including nearly
three-fourths of the whole courtyard, was beautified with a splendid
double colonnade, two tiers of pillars, one above the other, the lower
of delicately mottled Carystian marble wavily veined with green streaks
varying its whiteness, the upper of coral-red brecchia. Midway of the
court was a tank lined with marbles and always filled with clear water.

One morning Meffia, walking about the court, in her irritatingly
aimless fashion, passed between Brinnaria and the edge of the tank.
There was no earthly reason for her so doing, as Brinnaria was barely a
yard from the margin of the pool, and on the other side of Brinnaria was
the ample expanse of the pavement of the spacious court.

Brinnaria was exasperated by Meffia's proximity, by her
lackadaisical manner, by her shambling gait, by her sleep-walking
attitude, most of all by the peculiar thin, sour odor which Meffia
exhaled. At the sight of Meffia's elaborately disagreeable demeanor of
isolation, all Brinnaria's natural self began to boil in her; at the
whiff which assailed her nostrils she boiled over, all her uncurbed
instincts surging up at once. She put out one foot and gave Meffia a
push.

Meffia, with a squall and a great splash, fell into the tank.

She not only fell in, but she went under the water.

She went under and did not come up.

For an instant Brinnaria thought she was shamming to scare her;
but, in a twinkling she realized that Meffia had fainted.

Promptly she plunged in and rescued her victim.

Numisia, hurrying to the sound of Meffia's squawk, was horrified
at the sight of a dripping Vestal toiling up the steps of the tank
carrying over her shoulder another Vestal, equally dripping and limp as
a meal-sack, her arms and legs trailing horribly.

Agitation at Meffia's prolonged insensibility postponed inquiry as
to how she came to fall into the tank. It so happened that Causidiena
first questioned some of the maid-servants, who all hated Meffia and
liked Brinnaria. Therefore the ones interrogated told a story as much at
variance with the facts as they saw fit.

Brinnaria, after she was again dry-clad, quaked inwardly in
anticipation of Causidiena's wrath and suffered a good deal more at the
thought of her pained, silent displeasure. Hours passed, long hours
passed and nothing was said on the subject. From none of her sister
Vestals did she hear a word of reproach, not one of them behaved towards
her any differently from what was usual.

Finally one of the maids enlightened Brinnaria. Promptly she
sought a private audience with Causidiena. First she made sure that none
of the maids would suffer for their duplicity and partiality; then she
confessed.

The Chief Vestal was not wrathful, not even stern. She talked
mildly and gently, yet made Brinnaria feel very much ashamed of herself
and acutely penitent.

The end of the interview was that Causidiena said:

"You are such a robust child that you do not realize how frail
Meffia is. She is perfectly healthy, but is very easily unnerved or
exhausted. You have given her such a shock that she is unfit for duty.
Any Vestal is allowed to be ill for two nights and one day, if the
trouble seems trifling. But, if any Vestal is ill for a longer time, she
is promptly removed from the Atrium for nursing. I fear that Meffia may
not recover within the permitted time. I am most anxious that there
should be as few as possible cases of recorded illness in the Atrium
under my management. As you have caused the situation you must help me
to avoid what I fear. Go to Meffia and nurse her out of this and get her
about to-morrow morning."

"Castor be good to me!" Brinnaria cried. "Smell that girl for a
day and a night! Whew! Pretty severe punishment! But I deserve that and
worse. And I'll do anything for you, Causidiena."

Meffia hated Brinnaria cordially, yet she found her a deft,
tactful and silent nurse. But the very sight of Brinnaria was to her
an irritant tonic. She was entirely fit for duty the next day, not
 a trace of slackness, unwillingness or sullenness.

Causidiena early made up her mind that Brinnaria's intentions were
good and that she was far from planning her outbursts. She had herself
no prevision of what was coming, not an inkling of what was about to
happen, she blurted out her shocking remarks without herself knowing what
she was going to say and was overwhelmed with confusion when her own
ears heard the totally unexpected words which she had uttered; she
contemplated aghast the havoc she had wrought. Generally she made a
pretty fair attempt at demeaning herself as a Vestal should; but, every
once in a while, without warning, something of her old wild self surged
up in her and the speech was spoken or the action completed before she
realized she was about to speak or act at all.

One such freak gave her a sort of notoriety, brought her name to
the lips of every gossip in Rome.

She was as pleased with her privileges as a normal child of her
age with a set of new toys, as warily insistent on them as any
aristocrat of her build and appearance.

She learned the precise nature and extent of her prerogatives and
did her utmost to enjoy them all. Being an adept at accounts she
ascertained the character of the various estates and investments that
went to make up the great property which was her jointure as a Vestal,
made sure of the exact income from each of its components, also the
total amount; both how far she was allowed to have her way in spending
it and how soon she would be free of supervision in that respect. She
made her will before she had been a Vestal for a month, leaving all her
property to Almo, should she die before him; but the whole to the order
of Vestals if he died before her.

Of all her privileges the one she enjoyed most was the right to
drive where she pleased through the city in her private carriage, with
her lictor running ahead and clearing the way for it. Carriage-driving
within the city limits was restricted in Rome by severe regulations
rigorously enforced.* Ordinary travelling carriages might use only the
great main thoroughfares leading to the city gates. The owner of one,
unless he happened to live on one of those chief arteries of the
traffic, might not step from his house door into his carriage but must
have it halted at some point on the permitted avenues and must reach it
on foot or by litter. But there was no street or alley in Rome wide
enough for a carriage which a Vestal might not drive through; a. Vestal
might drive anywhere. Brinnaria was first taken out driving by
Causidiena and Numisia, then by the others in succession. Driving with
Meffia was no pleasure to her, but it was the etiquette of the order
that each Vestal in turn should offer the courtesy of her carriage to a
new member of the sisterhood.

        *In fact, wheeled vehicles except for those of the Emperor
        and the Vestals were forbidden in the city during the daytime.

After that formality had been complied with Brinnaria was
permitted to drive where she pleased, with what guest she chose, or
accompanied only by her official companion or by her maid.
Systematically she drove everywhere, once alone with her maid, once with
each of the other Vestals, often with her mother, often with Flexinna.
It gave her great pleasure to drive up the long zigzag approach to the
Capitol, where no human being save the Vestals and the Empress might be
driven, and where few Empresses had ever ventured to drive, to have her
carriage halted before the great Temple of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva,
where no carriage except the carriages of the Vestals had been seen for
more than a hundred years, to enter the temple and say her prayers. It
gave her even more pleasure to take her mother or Flexinna with her, as
was her privilege; to make them sharers in her right to be driven to
Rome's chief temple, to which all other Romans, even the Emperors, must
walk or be carried by litter-bearers.

She discovered another privilege of her position. Roman women of
the better classes never went out of doors alone. On the streets a lady,
if not companioned by one or more equals, was always accompanied by a
maid-servant. This had been the custom from time immemorial and had come
to have the force of a moral law. The sight of a woman of wealth and
position entirely alone in her carriage would have been startling, to
see a lady in her litter without a maid walking behind the bearers would
have been shocking: the spectacle of a lady alone on foot would have
given scandal.

But, by some survival of the simplicity of the manners in those
primitive days in which the order originated, the Vestals were
exceptions to this mandatory fashion. A Vestal might never go abroad on
foot, except in one of the solemn processions. But, in her litter or her
carriage, she might go anywhere in Rome unaccompanied, protected only by
her lictor and her bearers or coachman. This privilege, like many
others, marked the Vestals as being apart from and exalted above the
rest of woman-kind.

As soon as Brinnaria learned that she possessed this right she
proceeded to exercise it. Though she felt lonesome when driving alone
and enjoyed her outing far more when she had a companion, yet she drove
alone day after day, merely because it was her prerogative.
So driving she had, in one day, two thrilling experiences. She had
told her coachman to drive where he pleased and hardly noticed where she
was being driven.

Suddenly turning from a side street into one of the main
thoroughfares of the city, she encountered the co-Emperor Lucius Verus
with his official escort. It was during the busy days preceding his
departure for Antioch and his great campaign against the Parthians.
Verus, roused from his devotion to sport and pleasure, was feverish with
enthusiasm and full of mercurial energy. He bustled in and out of Rome,
inspecting camps, presiding at ceremonials and keeping everything in a
ferment.

That day he was returning from an inspection amid a large and
gorgeous retinue. Brinnaria had a blurred vision of splendid uniforms
and dazzling accoutrements. Her vision was blurred because her eyes
filled with tears; she turned hot and cold and almost fainted with
emotion, when the Emperor's twenty-four lictors lowered their fasces,
the whole procession halted, the escort and the Emperor himself swerved
their horses aside to let her pass and remained at the salute until she
had passed. The sudden realization of the importance of her official
position overwhelmed her.

As she drove on, when she recovered herself, she meditated on the
experience, and told herself that she must live up to her exalted
station, that she must never, never, never for such as one instant,
forget herself or behave otherwise than as became a Vestal.
On the very same drive, before she returned to the Atrium, she
completely forgot herself.

It was a hot, sultry afternoon and it suited her coachman to drive
homeward along the Subura, that thronged and unsavory Bowery of ancient
Rome. Three street urchins were teasing and maltreating a rough coated,
muddy little cur. Brinnaria called imperiously to her lictor to
interfere. He was too far ahead to hear her. Her coachman had all he
could do to control her mettlesome span of Spanish mares. She spoke to
the boys and they laughed at her. Before she knew it she had flung open
her carriage door, had leapt out, had cuffed soundly the ears of the
three dumbfounded gamins, and was back among her cushions, the dog in
her arms.

This escapade brought upon her a visit from the Pontifex of Vesta,
the semi-globular Faltonius Bambilio, diffusing pomposity. From him she
had to listen to a long lecture on deportment and to a reading of the
minutes of the meeting of the College of Pontiffs which had discussed
her public misbehavior.


CHAPTER VI - NOTORIETY



WITHIN a month she did far worse. She perpetrated, in fact, a deed
with the fame of which not only the city, but the Empire rang; made
herself notorious everywhere.

It was on the occasion of her introductory visit to the Colosseum
when, for the first time, she was a spectator at an exhibition of
fighting gladiators. She was in a high-strung state of elation and
anticipation. Going to the Amphitheatre, in itself, was a soul-stirring
experience. Meffia, to Brinnaria's joy, had been on duty that day, along
with Numisia. This alone was enough to put Brinnaria in a good humor.
Meffia's presence spoiled for her any sort of pleasure. Then, besides,
they drove to the Colosseum, not in their light carriages, but two by
two in their gorgeous state coaches, huge vehicles, of which the
woodwork was elaborately carved and heavily gilded and whose cushions
and curtains were all of that splendid official color, the imperial
purple. The name conveys to us a false impression, for the hue known
then as imperial purple was not what we should call a purple, but a
deep, dark crimson, like the tint of claret in a goblet.
Against a background of this magnificent color, the Vestals,
habited all in white, showed conspicuously. Their stately progress
through the streets, gazed at and pointed at by the admiring crowds,
was conducive to high spirits. Still more so was it to be ushered
obsequiously through cool corridors and up carpeted stairs to the
Vestals' private loge, a roomy space immediately to the right of the
imperial pavilion. To be inside the Colosseum at last set her eyes
dancing and her heart thumping; the anticipation of actually viewing the
countless fights of many hundreds of gladiators increased her
excitement; to be seated in front seats, with nothing but the carved
stone coping between her and the arena was most exhilarating of all. She
was delighted with her great, carved arm-chair, deeply cushioned and so
heavy that it was as firm on its solid oak legs as if bolted to the
stone floor. She settled herself in it luxuriously, gazed across the
smooth yellow sand, glanced up at the gay, parti-colored awning, and
then conned the vast audience, line after line of rose-crowned heads
rising tier above tier all about her.

She scanned the faces in the front row to left and right as far as
she could make them out clearly. She peered across the open space of the
arena, puckering her eyes to see better. When she caught sight of what
she was looking for she turned timidly, leaned past Manlia and asked
Causidiena:

"May I wave my hand to mother?"

"Certainly, my child," Causidiena assured her.

Brinnaria waved her little hand and was seen, and felt the thrill
of a general family handwaving in reply.

Suddenly she experienced a qualm of bashfulness, as if every one
in the enormous gathering were looking at her, watching her. She cast
down her eyes, wrapped her white robe close about her, hiding her hands
under it, and shrank into her arm-chair. For a while, for a long while,
she fanned herself nervously, very slowly, and striving to appear calm.
Gradually she became calm and laughed to herself at her own folly,
realizing that nobody was noticing her.

Nobody noticed her. Many spectators noticed the Vestals, but no
one noticed her individually. This she realized acutely before the day
was over.

At about the time when she began to feel herself at ease the
entrance of the Emperor and his suite distracted her attention from
herself. When the trumpet blew, announcing the approach of the Imperial
party, a hush fell on the vast audience and all eyes turned towards the
grand pavilion. When the trumpet blew the second time, just before the
Emperor came in sight, the hush deepened and the spectators watched
intently. When his head appeared as he mounted the stairs the audience
burst into the short, sharply staccato song of welcome, something like a
tuneful, sing-song college yell, with which Roman crowds greeted their
master. This vocal salute, a mere tag of eight or nine syllables, each
with its distinctive note, was repeated over and over until the Emperor
was seated.

Then the audience settled themselves into their seats. Brinnaria
had instinctively started to rise when she caught sight of the Emperor.
Manlia had put out a restraining hand. The Vestals, alone of all Romans,
remained seated in the presence of the Emperor, not even rising when he
appeared.

Marcus Aurelius was a tall, spare man of over forty years of age,
with abundant hair curling in long ringlets over his chest and
shoulders, and a full beard mingling with the carefully disposed curls.
He was a serious-faced man, careworn and solemn.

Brinnaria regarded him with interest. She had never seen him so
close and she felt a sudden fellow-feeling for him from the sense of
semi-equality with him that flooded through her at having remained
seated. She recalled vividly the half-dozen times she had watched from
balconies the passage of processions in which the Emperor took part, how
her mother had made her stand up the moment he came in sight and had
kept her standing until he was far away. Her sudden exaltation in social
position was borne in upon her with startling emphasis. Not even her
carriage rides had impressed her so tellingly with the sensation of her
own importance in the great world of Imperial Rome.

"How does he look to you?" Manlia asked. They were seated in the
order of their seniority, Causidiena on the right, then Gargilia,
Manlia next Brinnaria.

"He looks crushed under his responsibilities and anxieties,"
Brinnaria replied. "He looks depressed, even sad."

"He is all that, poor man," her neighbor agreed, "and no wonder in
these days. The Parthians are at us on the east, the Germans in the
north, and there have been more than twelve deaths in the palace each
day for twenty consecutive days now. This pestilence is enough to make
anybody sad."

"More than that," Brinnaria countered. "He looks irritated and
bored. Everybody else is alert and keyed up with anticipation. His eyes
are dull and he looks as if he wished that the show was over and he
could go home."

"You have read him right," Manlia told her. "He detests all kinds
of spectacles, takes no interest in races and hates beast-fights. Most
of all he loathes gladiatorial combats. Father has told me about it more
than once and Causidiena says the same thing. I can't understand it. I
never get tired of sword-fighting, myself. What I like about it is its
endless variety. I never saw any two fights exactly alike, never saw two
closely alike. Each fight is a spectacle by itself, entirely different
from any other. I don't mean the difference between the fighters in
respect to their equipment and appearance, though that contributes to
the variety also; I mean the difference in posture, method of defense
and attack, style of lunge and parry, and all that; and the countless
variations in form in the men, the subtle differences of character which
makes them face similar situations so very differently. You'll get the
feeling for it in a half a dozen shows and be as keen on it as the rest
of us.

"But the Emperor is different. Perhaps it's because he is such a
booky man and spends so much time in reading and study. But I think not.
There never was anybody more of a bookworm than Numisia and she is as
wild over the shows as any street-boy in Rome. Anyhow, whatever the
cause is, that is the way he is. He was more than surfeited with shows
before he was Emperor. While he was nothing but a boy, soon after he was
adopted and made Caesar, he often had to preside in the Circus or here,
when Hadrian was away travelling and Antonius and Verus were on the
frontiers. He used to bring his tutors with him and have two of them sit
on each side of him a little behind him. Then, after the shows had
started, he would put a tablet on his knee and write a theme or work out
a problem in geometry and when he had finished it, would pass it to one
of his tutors for comment, or he would have them make out sets of
questions on history or something else and he would write out the
answers the best he could. Sometimes he would read. All this he did as
calmly as if he were alone in a closed room with nothing to call off his
attention. Yet he was most careful to seem to watch the shows and would
look up every little while and gaze about the arena. But nothing ever
distracted him from his lessons. That is the kind he is. He simply never
cared for this sort of thing. He says that what oppresses him is the
maddening monotony of gladiatorial shows. Fancy anybody thinking sword-
fighting monotonous! But he does. He says every combat is just like
every other. All he sees in a fight is two men facing each other and one
being killed. He gets no thrills from the uncertainties of the outcome,
no pleasure from the dexterity and skill of the fighters. To him it's
just butchery, and the same kind of butchery over and over. He says he
might get some enjoyment out of a show if something novel would happen,
something he never saw before, something unexpected. But nothing ever
does."

Brinnaria regarded curiously this grave, earnest man, who derived
so little pleasure from the most coveted position on earth. She
continued to watch him until everybody turned to the procession around
the arena of all who were to fight that day, the invariable preliminary
of a gladiatorial show and always a splendid spectacle.
When the fights began Brinnaria felt at first an unexpected
tightening of the chest, as if a band were being drawn tight just under
her armpits. Her breath came short and hard and her heart thumped her
ribs.

The first sight of blood made her feel faint and the horrible
contortions just below her of a dying man, who writhed in strong
convulsions like a fish out of water, made her qualmish and sick.
But all that soon passed off. She was a Roman and the Romans were
professional killers, had been professional killers for a thousand
years. Success in hand to hand combat with any individual foe was every
male Roman's ideal of the crowning glory of human life; the thought of
it was in every Roman's mind from early childhood, every act of life was
a preparation for it. Their wives and sisters shared their enthusiasm
for fighting and their daughters inherited the instinct. Combat on the
field of battle was felt as the chief business of a man, to which all
other activities merely led up. By reflected light, as it were, every
kind of combat acquired a glamour in the thoughts of a Roman. The idea
of men killing men, of men being killed by men, was familiar to all
Romans, of whatever sex or age. Brinnaria was not affected as a modern
girl would be by the sight of blood or of death. The novelty revolted
her at first, but only briefly. Soon she was absorbed in the interest of
the fighting.

Almost at once her eye was caught by a young and handsome fighter
who reminded her strongly of Almo.

His adversary was that kind of gladiator known technically as a
secutor, a burly ruffian in complete armor, with huge shin-guards like
jack-boots, a kilt of broad leather straps hanging in two overlapping
rows, the upper set plated with bronze scales, a bronze corselet, and,
fitting closely to his shoulders, covering head and neck together, a
great, heavy helmet. He carried a large shield, squarish in shape, but
curving to fit him as if he were hiding behind a section of the outer
bark of a big tree. He was armed with a keen, straight bladed Spanish
sword.

Facing this portentous tower of metal was a gladiator of the sort
known as a retiarius, equipped solely with a long-handled, slender-
shafted trident, like a fisherman's eel-spear, and a voluminous, wide-
meshed net of thin cord. His only clothing was a scanty body-piece of
bright blue. His feet were small with high-arched insteps. Brinnaria
particularly noticed his perfectly shaped toes. His bare legs, body and
arms were in every proportion the perfection of form, the supple muscles
rippling exquisitely under his warm tanned skin. His face was almost
beautiful, with a round chin, thin curled lips, a straight nose, and a
wide brow. Its expression was lively, even merry, almost roguish, his
lips parted in an alert smile, his blue eyes sparkling. He seemed to
enjoy the game in which he was engaged, to be brimming over with self-
confidence, to anticipate success, to relish his foretaste of combat
with a sort of impish delight.

Roman children heard as much talk of gladiators as modern children
hear of baseball or cricket. Brinnaria knew perfectly well that the
betting on a set-to between such a pair was customarily five to three
against the secutor and on the retiarius. Yet she felt the sensation
usual with onlookers in such a case, the sensation purposed by the
device of pairing men so differently equipped, the sensation that the
mailed secutor was invincible and the naked retiarius helpless against
him. She was keyed up with interest.

In fact the combat was interesting. The secutor, of course, could
have disposed of his antagonist in a trice, if he had only been able to
reach him. But a clumsy, heavy secutor never could reach a nimble, agile
retiarius. The one Brinnaria was watching was more than usually light-
footed and skipped about his adversary in a taunting, teasing way. Again
and again he cast his net intentionally too short, merely to show how
easily he could recover it and escape his opponent's onset. He danced,
capered, pretended to be lame and that he could not avoid being
overtaken, led his pursuer on, out-manoeuvred him, derided him; twice he
lunged through the flapping straps of his kilt and grazed his thigh. The
secutor was barely scratched, but his blood trickled down his shin-guard
and he was limping.

Then, all in a flash, the retiarius pirouetted too rashly, slipped
on ton the sand, fell sprawling, failed to rise in time, and was slashed
deeply all down one calf. He rolled over in a last effort to escape, but
the secutor kicked him in the ribs and, before he could recover, sent
the trident spinning with a second kick and set his foot upon his
victim's neck. So standing he rolled his eyes over that part of the
audience nearest him to discover whether it was the pleasure of the
lookers-on that the defeated man should be killed or spared.

Now it so happened that nearly all the spectators in that part of
the audience were watching a far more exciting contest farther out in
the arena, where two Indian elephants, each manned by a crew of five
picked men, were clashing in a terrific struggle No one, except
Brinnaria, had any eyes for the plight of the young retiarius below them
The secutor beheld indifferent faces gazing over his head The few thumbs
he could see pointed outward. Brinnaria, to be sure, was holding out her
right arm, thumb flat, and doing her best to attract the secutor's
attention. She failed. He glanced, indeed, at the Vestals, but as three
of them sat impassive he missed Brinnaria's imperious gesture.
He prepared to put his foe to death. First, however, he looked
further along the front rows to make sure that he had the permission of
the general audience, since the occupants of the Imperial box and of the
Vestals loge seemed to ignore him.

Brinnaria perceived that he would probably not look again in her
direction; that as soon as his roving eyes came back from their
unhurried survey of the audience, he would deliver the fatal blow.
She quickly knotted the corner of her robe to the arm of her
chair, squirmed out of it, and threw it over the parapet. The robe of a
Roman lady was sleeveless and seamless, rather like a very long pair of
very thin blankets, all in one piece. Tied, as she had tied it, by one
corner, it made a sort of rope as it hung. She had acted so quickly that
no one noticed her, not even Manlia, who sat next her, staring
fascinatedly at the spectacle of the wrestling elephants and their
warring crews.

Grasping her robe firmly with both hands, escaping by a hair's-
breadth the despairing clutch of the horrified Manlia, Brinnaria half
vaulted, half rolled over the parapet, swung sailor-fashion to the rope
her robe formed, went down it, hand over hand, raced across the sand and
faced the victorious secutor.

He, although a foreigner and a savage, had been long enough in
Rome to know perfectly what a Vestal was and he recoiled from her in a
panic no less than he would have felt had the goddess Vesta herself come
down from the sky to balk him of his prey.

The next instant no one was regarding the death-struggle of the
elephants, nor any other of the scores of fights ended, ending, under
way or just begun. Every human being in the audience was staring at the
amazing spectacle of a Vestal virgin, clad only in her thin, clinging
tunic, standing over a fallen retiarius and facing an appalled and
dumbfounded secutor.

The place fell very still. So still that the shrill voice of a
street-gamin, a boy from the Via Sacra, was audible throughout the vast
enclosure from gallery to gallery. He yelled in his cutting falsetto:
"Good for you, Sis!"

But his neighbors silenced him at once and not even any other
ragamuffin lifted his voice. The audience were startled mute. They were
quite ready to applaud the girl's daring, but the shocking impropriety
of her breach of decorum struck them dumb.

The Emperor, roused from his meditations by the sudden hush,
looked about him for the cause of it and saw the situation. He leaned
forward, arm out, thumb flat against the extended fingers. The secutor
sheathed his sword.

Manlia, with great presence of mind, untied the dangling robe and
dropped it over the parapet. One of the arena attendants carried it to
Brinnaria and she put it on. But she would not stir and stood straddling
the fallen lad until one of the Emperor's aides came out of one of the
low doors in the arena-wall, crossed to her and assured her that the
defeated retiarius would be spared and cared for. Then she suffered
herself to be led back to her seat, by way of the door in the wall and
passages and stairs never meant for any Vestal to tread.

Not until they saw Brinnaria move off in charge of the staff-
officer did the audience let loose their pent-up feelings. The place
pulsated with a roar like that of a great waterfall in a deep gorge,
salvo after salvo of cheers swelling and merging. The deep boom
of their applause pursued Brinnaria and made her cower. The
people would never forget her now. They were in ecstasy. She
was their darling.


CHAPTER VII - AUDIENCE


ON the drive homeward from that unforgettable gladiatorial
exhibition Manlia and Gargilia shared the second state coach:
in the first sat Brinnaria by Causidiena.

"My child," Causidiena queried, "what ever made you do it?"

"I don't know," Brinnaria replied. "I did it before I thought."

"Well!" said her elder philosophically. "It is done now and
cannot be helped. But please try to remember that a Vestal is
expected to control herself at all times, never to act without
forethought, to reflect long before she acts, to do nothing
unusual, to be very sure in each instance that what she is about
to do is wholly becoming to a Vestal."

"I'll keep on trying," Brinnaria replied mutinously, "but I was
not constructed to be a Vestal. I always knew it; I know it now
and I am afraid I'll continue my blundering through the conventions.
I'm built that way."

She had to endure a second long lecture from Faltonius Bambilio.
She listened submissively enough, but vouchsafed not one word of
self-defence, rejoinder or comment; and, when urged to speak, she
was obstinately silent.

"My daughter," Faltonius droned at her, "remember that, since
your entrance into the order of Vestals, I stand to you in the
relation of parent to his own child. You should confide in me as
in your spiritual father."

"I should do nothing of the kind," Brinnaria refuted him. "I know
the statutes of the order better than that. Up to the days of the
Divine Augustus, the Pontifex Maximus inhabited the house next to
the house of the Vestals and stood in the closest relation of
fatherhood towards them. But since he went to live on the Palatine
and made us a present of his house we have occupied all this Atrium
 which was built in the place of the two houses. Since then no one
has been in the same intimate relation of control over us. The
Emperors have always held the office of Pontifex Maximus and as
such each Emperor has been the spiritual father of the Vestals.
The Emperor is my spiritual father and you are not."

"Your self-opinionated talk does you little credit," Faltonius retorted.
"Since you know so much you must know also that for many years
each Emperor has designated some priest as Pontifex of Vesta to
be his deputy and to stand in the closest relation of parental oversight
towards the members of your consecrated order; I am that deputy."

"I have no desire to confide in a deputy," Brinnaria told him,
"or to consider the deputy as my real spiritual father. If I feel
 inclined to confide I'll make my confidences to my genuine
spiritual father, not to his understrapper."

Bambilio was piqued and spoke sourly.

"The Emperor," he said, "will be far from pleased with my report
of you."

"It will make no difference to me or to him what you report or
whether you make any report or not," spoke Brinnaria. "I'm going
to have a talk with him myself."

"Doubtless," Bambilio meditated. "He has sent for you to rebuke
you."

"He has done nothing of the kind," she retorted vigorously. "He
has more sense. And if he had sent for me I should not have gone.
I know my rights. If he wanted to talk to me, he'd have to come
to me here. But as, in this case, I wanted to talk to him, I have
asked for an audience and the day and the hour have been fixed.
I am to have an audience to-morrow morning. And now, as I am to
talk to him myself, I see no reason why I should spend more time
being bored by his deputy. If you please, I should be obliged if
you would terminate this interview."

Astounded and dumb, Faltonius bowed himself out.

Causidiena suggested that she accompany Brinnaria on her visit to
the Palace.

"It would be lovely to have you with me," Brinnaria said, "and I
am ever so grateful for your offer. You are a dear and I love you.
I shall want you and wish for you all the way there, all the time
I am there and all the way back. I shall be scared to death. But
I must go alone. In the first place it is my right, if I were only
six years old, to have audience with the Emperor alone whenever I
ask for it and as often as I ask for it. I am not going to abate
an iota of my rights merely for my own comfort. In the second place,
I must go through this unhelped and unsupported all by myself. I know
 it; I must fight it out alone and come through alone. He'll be
sympathetic, if I deserve it. If I don't deserve sympathy from him
I don't deserve it from you, nor your company and your countenance,
either."

Scared Brinnaria was, but even through her worst qualms of panic
she was uplifted by an elating sense of her own importance. Not
her encounter with Verus and his retinue, not her having remained
seated when Aurelius entered the Colosseum had so poignantly made
 her realize how exalted was a Vestal. She drove to the Palace
alone, not in her light carriage, but in her huge state coach,
feeling very small in her white robes amid all that crimson
upholstery, but also feeling herself a very great personage.

Her reception at the Palace made her feel even more so. The
magnificence of the courtyard in which her coach came to a
standstill, the ceremonial of turning out the guard in her
honor, the formality with which she was conducted from corridor
to corridor and from hail to hail, the immensity and gorgeousness
 of the vast audience hall in which she was finally left alone
with the Emperor; all these did not so much overwhelm her as exalt
her. She felt herself indeed a princess.

The Emperor greeted Brinnaria kindly, was as sympathetic as possible
and put her at her ease at once. He soothed her, made her seat
herself comfortably and said:

"Don't worry about what you have done. You are certainly the most
 startling Vestal since Gegania, but you have really done nothing
actually wrong. So do not agitate yourself about what cannot be
altered. The question which concerns me is, what will you do next?"

"I think," said Brinnaria, "that the next thing I shall do will
be to procure a good strong rope and hang myself."

"My child," the shocked Emperor exclaimed, "you really should not
speak so flippantly of so dreadful an idea!"

"I'm not a particle flippant this time," Brinnaria declared. "I
know I am often flippant, but not now, not a bit. I am just as
serious as life and death. I have thought of nothing but suicide
since Trebellius conducted me back to my seat. I can't get the
idea out of my head and that is why I have come to you."

"Tell me all about