ppiness; that is to say, my Felicitas; may
nothing evil come over her, over our threshold!"

But "Felicitas"--who was she? and who was he, whose happiness she had
been, and what had become of them? And this villa, how----?

This was my last waking thought, for with the last question I fell
asleep.

And long did I slumber; for when the song of the nightingale, loudly
exultant, close to my ear, awoke me, it was dark night; a single star
shone through the branches of the oak. I sprang up: "Felicitas!
Fulvius!" I cried, "Liuthari! Felicitas! where are they?"

"Felicitas!" softly repeated the echo from the hill. All else was still
and dark.

So was it a dream?

Now, _this_ dream I will retain.

Felicitas, I hold thee!

Thou shalt not escape me.

Poetical fancy can immortalise thee.

And I hastened home, and the same night noted down the history which I
had dreamt among the ruins of the old Roman villa.

CHAPTER I.

It was a beautiful evening in June, The sun threw its golden beams from
the west, from Vindelicia, on the Mercurius Hill, and the modest villa
which crowned it.

Here and there on the great street a two-wheeled cart, drawn by a yoke
of Noric oxen, was returning home at the close of the market-day
through the west gate of Juvavum, the _Porta Vindelica_. The colonists
and peasants had been selling vegetables, fowls, and pigeons in the
Forum of Hercules; but the bustle of the street reached the hill only
as a murmur. Here it was still and quiet; one only heard outside the
low stone wall which surrounded the garden the lively rippling of a
little spring, which at its source was prettily enclosed in marble, and
after it had fed the fountain in the middle, and had wandered through
the garden in artificially winding rivulets, escaped through a gap in
the wall and hurried down the hill in a stone channel. Close by was the
gate entrance, surmounted by a statue of Mercury, but open, without
door or lattice. In the direction of the town, towards the south-east,
there lay at the foot of the hill carefully tended vegetable and fruit
gardens, meadows with the most succulent verdure, and corn-fields with
luxuriant grain, which products the Romans had brought into the land of
the barbarians.

Behind the villa, towards the north, fine beech-woods towered and
rustled, ascending the mountain slopes; and out of their depths sounded
from afar the metallic note of the golden ori