he daily gazette."[88]

[88] _Acta Diurna_, prepared officially.

"Where is it? Read! Let me see," pleaded Cornelia, agitated and
trembling.

"Why, how troubled you are," giggled Herennia. "Yes, I have my
freedman copy down the whole bulletin every day, as soon as it is
posted by the censor's officers; now let me see," and she produced
from under her robe a number of wooden, wax-covered tablets, strung
together: "the last praetor's edict; the will of old Publius Blaesus;"
and she ran over the headings with maddening slowness: "the speech in
the Senate of Curio--what an impudent rascal; the money paid yesterday
into the treasury,--how dull to copy all that down!--the meteor which
fell over in Tibur, and was such a prodigy; oh, yes, here it is at
last; you may as well hear what all Rome knows now, it's at the end,
among the private affairs. 'Lucius Ahenobarbus, son of Lucius
Domitius, the Consular, and Cornelia, daughter of the late tribune,
Caius Lentulus, are in love. They will be married soon.'"

These two brief sentences, which the mechanical difficulties under
which journalistic enterprise laboured at that day made it impossible
to expand into a modern "article," were quite sufficient to tell a
whole story to Rome. Cornelia realized instantly that she had been
made the victim of some vile trick, which she doubted not her would-be
lover and her uncle had executed in collusion. She took the tablets
from Herennia's hand, without a word, read the falsehoods once, twice,
thrice. The meaning of the day attached to the terms used intimated
the existence of a low intrigue, quite as much as any honourable
"engagement." If Cornelia did not soon become the lawful wife of
Lucius Ahenobarbus, the world would feel justified in piling scandal
upon her name. The blow was numbing in its brutality. Instead of
crying and execrating the liars, as Herennia fully expected her to do,
Cornelia merely handed back the tablets, and said with cold dignity,
"I think some very unfortunate mistake has been made. Lucius
Ahenobarbus is no friend of mine. Will you be so kind as to leave me
with my maids?"

Herennia was overborne by the calm, commanding attitude of the rival
she had meant to annoy. When Cornelia became not the radiant
_debutante_, but the haughty patrician lady, there was that about her
which made her wish a mandate. Herennia, in some confusion, withdrew.
When she was gone, Cornelia ordered her maids out of the room,
stripped