Two days later, Brinnaria had a visit from Flexinna. Flexinna’s eyes were dancing.
“G-G-Guess where I’ve been,” she challenged.
“I’m not good at guessing,” Brinnaria parried; “better tell me.”
“I’ve b-b-been to the Palace,” Flexinna revealed.
“What took you there?” Brinnaria queried, surprised.
“I was sent for,” Flexinna declared, elated.
“Who’d you see?” Brinnaria enquired.
“The Emperor himself,” proclaimed Flexinna triumphantly.
Brinnaria was very much astonished.
“Better tell me the whole story,” she suggested.
“Not much story,” said Flexinna. “Aurelius t-t-told me that he wanted t-t-to see you again and that, as a formal visit from the Emperor as P-P-Pontifex Maximus at the Atrium was unusual and was likely to c-c-cause g-g-gossip, whereas you Vestals are c-c-continually at the Palace to ask favors for all sorts of people who p-p-pester you to use your influence with the Emperor, he thought it b-b-best to suggest that you apply for an audience t-t-to-morrow. He said he wanted the intimation c-c-conveyed to you as unobtrusively as p-p-possible and d-d-desired p-p-particularly that no one should ever know or g-g-guess that it had b-b-been g-g-given. So he sent for me, as your b-b-best friend, since he was sure I would never t-t-tell anybody.
“B-B-Better send along your application for an audience. It was p-p-plain to me that he has something agreeable to t-t-tell you. His face was just as g-g-grave as usual but his eyes sparkled at me, as d-d-different as p-p-possible from their habitual dull filmed appearance. He was all k-k-kindliness and anticipation.”
“I’m willing to take the hint, of course,” Brinnaria replied.
Next morning she found Aurelius most cordial and informal in his greeting to her.
“I’ve been investigating Almo,” he said, “and I am more than pleased with all I can learn of him. I see no reason for not telling you that, from the very day you were taken as a Vestal, some of the most expert, secret and trustworthy men in the employ of the information department have had no other duties than to keep close watch upon you and Almo. I have been over all the papers relating to him and to you, I have talked with the men themselves. They all assure me that never once have you and Almo met since he reached your father’s house a half hour too late. They also report that, in the course of his injudicious moonings about your haunts, he has always kept at a respectful distance. And except for those same loverly danglings about places where he might catch glimpses of you, I can find nothing against the lad. Everybody speaks most highly of him. His former tutors and preceptors are enthusiastic in their laudations of his capacities, abilities, diligence and attainments in all matters pertaining to books and study. About Falerii he was regarded as a fine specimen of a young nobleman, huntsman and swimmer, good at all rustic sports, as haughty as the proudest when he was given good cause to assert himself, but habitually affable, unassuming and sunny tempered. Towards his father’s tenants and slaves he was most kindly and nothing could be more to any man’s credit than his downright heroic behavior from the very day the pestilence appeared on his estates, all through the frightful period of its raging about Falerii, until the neighborhood had somewhat recovered after the plague had abated.
“The most extraordinary feature of the reports about him is that they all agree as to his amazing devotion to you. All persons who know him or know of him are unanimous in the opinion that he has never taken the slightest personal interest in any human being except yourself; all are emphatic in stating that he has certainly never manifested any affection for anyone else. This is unprecedented. I never heard of such another case. There is nothing astonishing about a young Roman declaring that he would remain unmarried for thirty years in order to mate, ultimately, with the girl of his choice. There is nothing wonderful about his keeping his word. But any other youth I ever heard of would have consoled himself variously, and variedly. Almo’s austere celibacy is a portent in our world and altogether marvellous. It lifts his affair with you out of the humdrum atmosphere of to-day and puts it on a level with the legendary stories of heroic times, with the life-long fidelities of the Milesian tales.
“Under the stress of such severe and unflinching self isolation I do not wonder that his broodings drove him to overstep the bounds of common sense, that he was irresistibly compelled to leave Falerii, to come to Rome, to loiter where he might, at least, behold you at a distance. I shall make sure that he does so no longer. This very day he sets out for Carthage, Theveste and the deserts to the south beyond the lagoons of Nepte. But I cannot be angry with him for being unable to restrain his longing at least to set eyes on you. And I see no reason why you two, who have not exchanged a word in more than nine years, should not meet here in this room and say farewell to each other before I put the Mediterranean between you.”
Brinnaria sprang up.
“I see many reasons,” she declared, “and my feelings are all against seeing Almo until my service as a Vestal is ended.”
“I can well believe,” came the answer, “that you feel that way at the first presentation of the idea. But I am your Emperor and also Chief Pontiff of Rome. I am engaged at present in solving the problem of ow best to ensure peace of mind to one of Rome’s Vestals. To ensure her peace of mind I am about to relegate her future husband to important duties on a far frontier of the Empire. I judge that he will better perform his duties, that she will better perform hers, if she bids him farewell in my presence. I am a lover of wisdom and a student of wisdom.* I believe I possess some pretensions to wisdom. Will you not defer to me in this? I am of the opinion that he will worry less about you and you less about him if you see each other once before your twenty years of certain separation begins.”
*The wisdom of Marcus Aurelius was recognized during his
lifetime and is highly regarded even today, over 1900 years
later. His book, Meditations, remains in print and is
available through Project Gutenberg.—PG Ed.
Brinnaria looked mutinous and gazed at the Emperor in silence. In silence he waited for her to speak. At last she said, curtly:
“I bow to your authority.”
The Emperor struck his silver gong and a page appeared. Aurelius gave a brief order. A few moments later Almo was ushered in. After his formal salute to the Emperor he stood silent, his eyes fixed on Brinnaria.
They made a fine picture. The ceiling of the immense hall was a barrel-vault, of which the beams were stuccoed in cream-white, picked out with gilding, while between them the depth of each soffit was colored an intense deep blue, against which stood out a great gilt rosette. The mighty pilasters, whose gilded capitals supported the vaulting, were of many-veined dark yellow marble, polished and gleaming like the slabs of pale yellow marble which panelled the interspaces. The high-moulded wainscot was of red and green porphyry, somberly smooth and shining. Against it, below the wall-panels, were set great chests of carved and gilded wood, while about the bases of the pilasters were placed groups of settees and armchairs, similarly carved and gilded and richly upholstered. The floor was paved with an intricate mosaic of parti-colored bits of marble, its expanse broken only by the great gorgeous carpet before the throne, by the chair set for Brinnaria, by the onyx table, supported on sculptured monsters like griffons, beside the throne, and by the throne itself, a curule seat of ivory mounted with gold, its crimson cushion glowing, set far out in the room.
Before the throne stood Aurelius, his head bare, the long ringlets of his hair and beard sweeping his shoulders and his bosom, one foot a trifle advanced, the gold eagle embroidered on his sky-blue buskin showing beneath the crimson silk robes, lavishly embroidered with a complicated pattern of winding vines, bright blue and green, edged with gold, which the etiquette of the time imposed upon even a philosophically austere Emperor; on his right Brinnaria, erect and tense in her white official habit, her square white headdress all but hiding her coronet of dark braids, her veil pushed back from her flushed face; the tassels and ribbons of her head-band, her great pearl necklace, the big pearl brooch that fastened the folds of her headdress where they crossed on her breast, and the bunch of fresh white flowers which it clasped, rising and falling with the heaving of her bosom; facing her, splendid in the gilded armor and scarlet cloak of a commander of irregular cavalry, Almo.
“You know why I have sent for you,” Aurelius reminded him. “Speak out.”
Like a school-boy repeating a lesson by rote, Alma spoke.
“Brinnaria,” he said, “the Emperor has remonstrated with me on my recent folly. I am sincerely ashamed of myself and I wish to apologize to you for my lack of self-control and for my lack of consideration for you. I leave Rome before sunset and shall not return until I may return without danger to you.”
Aurelius looked at Brinnaria.
“Caius,” she said, “I forgive you. I trust that you will win promotion and honor where you are going and I am sure that you will do your duty to the Empire. May the blessing of all the gods be on you and may you return to me safe and well.”
“And may I find you safe and well when I return,” spoke Almo. “Farewell, Brinnaria.”
“Farewell, Caius,” said she.
The Emperor nodded and Almo bowed himself out.
“Do you know,” said Aurelius, when they were alone, “I have been thinking over what you said about Almo’s peculiar notability of looks. It puzzles me as it puzzles you. He is not merely of distinguished appearance, he is unusual, striking, unforgettable, conspicuous. I have talked about it to several of my gentlemen-in-waiting, equerries and orderlies. They have seen him lately about the stables of the Greens. They all say that he is, in fact, as normally proportioned as any youth alive, but they confirm what you said about his long-legged appearance. Julianus used almost the same word you used, said Almo looked ‘Grasshoppery.’ They all say Almo is precisely the most unmistakable, the most readily and quickly recognizable youth in all our young nobility.”
Brinnaria rose to go. Aurelius bent on her a kindly smile.
“I have been talking about you with Faustina,” he said. “We are both much interested by the strangeness of your fate, by the difficulty and delicacy of your situation and by the wonderful constancy of you both. Faustina and I are a most united pair, never happy out of each other’s company and very proud of our domestic felicity. We are, if I may use the word, rather prone to gloat over it, and, while continually congratulating ourselves and each other, we cannot but mourn the infrequency of such happiness throughout our Italian nobility. There are few matrons in Rome as serenely happy as your friend Flexinna, few indeed who find all their happiness in children, husband and household. And of those who really enjoy their homes most are remarried after a divorce, or even after two or more. Our society suffers from a plague worse than the pestilence itself, a plague of greed for excitement, eagerness for novelty, of peevishness and fickleness.
“In this unhealthy atmosphere such households as Vocco’s are most notable. And that you, who seem by nature fitted for just such blessedness as has befallen Flexinna, should have been robbed of it by a strange series of peculiar circumstances wins for you our interest and our solicitude. Still more are our hearts drawn towards you by your unwavering fidelity, alike to your present duties and all that they imply and to that love which you have had to put away and forget, to the ideal of that felicity which you have had to postpone so far.
“Faustina desires an interview with you. She is now in the amber gallery. I shall have you conducted there, if you do not object.”
Brinnaria could not very well object and after an equerry, very stately in his garb of duty, and two gaudily clad pages had escorted her through what seemed like miles of corridors, she found herself alone with the Empress.
The Empress she had so far seen infrequently and spoken with only seldom. It was impossible to be a Vestal, in the heyday of Rome’s Imperial times, and not meet and know the Empress of Rome. Brinnaria had seen her whenever they were both present at the Circus or the Amphitheatre; had been close to her at all important state functions; had occasionally dined with her at formal Palace banquets, when the curved sofa about the Empress’ table was always occupied by the Empress, the wives of the chief Flamens and the Vestals; but had hardly ever exchanged a word with her.
Faustina was endowed with the general healthiness with which Roman noblewomen were blessed. But she had had the bad luck to suffer from many and severe illnesses. These and her slow recoveries from them had kept her away from very many official functions and public festivals. Numerous had been the occasions on which Aurelius had appeared without her. When she was well, indeed, they were always together, if possible. A great proportion of his time, however, was occupied with official duties of such a nature that, according to Roman etiquette, no woman could participate in them. During such enforced separations Faustina sought amusement. And with the overflowing energy and abounding vigor which she displayed between her illness, she threw herself into the whirl of her pleasures with such impetuosity, there was so much rollicking and roistering about her favorite diversions that she attracted to herself and kept around her just those elements of Roman society with which the Vestals were least likely to mingle, professional idlers, and what we moderns would call the fast set. Naturally, therefore, Brinnaria and Faustina had never had any familiar intercourse. This was their first real conversation.
Faustina was not a large woman. She was of medium height, slender and graceful. She was noted for the originality of her coiffures, which made the most of her magnificent hair. Her hair Brinnaria noticed the moment her eyes fell on her.
Her habitual expression of haughtiness and boredom had vanished from the Empress’s face and she was all kindliness and solicitude.
Faustina put her at her ease at once.
“I have always been so sorry,” she began, “that I was ill the day you climbed over the balustrade of the podium and rescued the retiarius. I’ve missed many a sight I regretted, I miss so much by falling ill again and again, but I never missed a sight I regretted missing more than that. Nothing more worth seeing ever happened in the Colosseum.”
“I was terribly ashamed when I found what I had done,” said Brinnaria.
“Of course you were,” the Empress agreed.
This broke the ice between them and Faustina led her into a long talk about all her past, her love affair, her life as a Vestal, her bereavements, her embarrassing circumstances, her future, her hopes.
Brinnaria left the Empress, feeling that she had found a real friend and also feeling comforted at heart.
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