s and gladiators, the
mockery of all that was pure and holy, the derisive insults to the gods
themselves--these were practices which the public voice connected with
the house of Emilius, not as occasional outbreaks of wild frivolity, but
as the fixed habits of his daily life. And if these things were true,
what claim of pride or policy could such a place advance to distract her
lord from the allegiance due to his own home alone?

But possibly these things might not be true. She reflected that the poet
was wealthy; and as long as the world continues to be envious, riches
will seldom fail to bring false report upon their possessor. He was a
man of genius, also; and all such can scarcely fail to find rivals who
will turn satirists and attack them in their homes and daily life.
Certainly, it is not difficult for slander to magnify the genial
gatherings of kindred spirits into scenes of wild debauchery. And it
was also true, that if mere outside appearance is of any value as an
index of what is hidden, the slight figure, the pale and almost girlish
face, and the winning and courteous demeanor of the poet were far from
indicating a man of low and debasing inclinations. Moreover, his
writings as surely spoke the contrary; and as she thus reasoned, AEnone
lifted from its case a vellum roll with which Emilius himself had
presented her, containing many of his poems, exquisitely engrossed.
These poems treated not upon the pleasures of wine and love--those
fruitful and ever-varying subjects of the Horatian school. Instead of
this, they pursued, in deep-sounding and majestically rolling dactyls,
the less favorite and trodden track of Socrates and Plato, and
discoursed upon temperance and honor--upon the satisfaction derived from
a well-spent life, and the delights attending a peaceful death--upon the
immateriality of the soul, and the reward bestowed by the gods upon
those who have honored them by leading a virtuous career. As AEnone
slowly turned over leaf after leaf of the parchment roll, she felt her
heart perplexed within her. She could scarcely believe that none of
those tales of reckless dissipation were true, for she remembered that
some of them had reached her ear attended by evidence so circumstantial
that it was impossible to reject them; but, if true, how account for
these grand maxims of lofty morality? What object could their author
have in thus uselessly playing the hypocrite, when amatory and
bacchanalian choruses wou