been too inert to worry about anything, but I almost worried
at the thought of their disappointment, through my relapse.

Tanno told me that he, knowing the Emperor's character pretty well, had
taken it upon himself to have them passed in with him as the Emperor had
ordered, and had himself asked permission to present them and had
presented them. The next day, he said, everyone of them had returned home.

I heaved a deep sigh of relief: my tenants and my Sabine Estate were off
my mind; I might be entirely easy about all things in Sabinum.

He then told me what a brilliant success Marcia was among the pleasure-
loving, novelty-loving, luxurious high-living set in our city society.

"Since the enforcement of the old-fashioned laws relaxed and became a dead
letter and some were even repealed," he said, "not a few men of equestrian
rank have married freed-women and such occurrences no longer cause any
scandal or much remark. But the results are not generally productive of
any social success for the ill-assorted pair.

"I have known a few freedwomen married to men of wealth, and equestrian
rank, who gained some vague approximation of social standing among the
wives of their husbands' friends. But Marcia is the first freedwoman I
ever knew or heard of to be treated, by everybody and at once, as if she
had been freeborn and since birth in her husband's class. Martius has not
brought this about, or aided much; he is a good enough fellow, but he has
no social qualities; for all the power he has of attracting friends he
might as well be an archaic statue. Marcia has done it all. She's a
wonder."

Then he told me of Murmex: how he was already rated Rome's champion
swordsman; how the Palace Palaestra was jammed with notables eager to see
him fence, how magnates competed for invitations to such exhibitions, how
Murmex was overwhelmed with attentions of all kinds from all sorts of
people, had had a furnished apartment put at his disposal by one admirer,
a litter and bearers presented him by another, already saw his domicile
crowded with presents of statuary, paintings, furniture, flowers and all
possible gifts, how he was an immediate and brilliant success with all
classes, even the populace talking of him, crowding behind his litter, and
demanding him for the next public exhibition of gladiators.

That such luck had befallen a man whom I had presented to Court augured
well for me, indubitably.

After I had been out of bed an