ou know
my nephew, Quintus Drusus of Praeneste?"

"It is an honour to acknowledge friendship with such an excellent
young man," said Curio, bowing.

"I am glad to hear so. I understand that he has already suffered no
slight calamity for adhering to your party."

"_Vah!_" and the tribune shrugged his shoulders. "Doubtless he has had
a disagreeable time with the consul-elect, but from all that I can
hear, the girl he lost was hardly one to make his life a happy one.
It's notorious the way she has displayed her passion for young Lucius
Ahenobarbus, and we all know what kind of a man _he_ is. But I may
presume to remark that your ladyship would hardly come here simply to
remind me of this."

"No," replied Fabia, directly, "I have come here to appeal to you to
do something for me which Marcellus the consul was too drunk to try to
accomplish if he would."

Fabia had struck the right note. Only a few days before Appius
Claudius, the censor, had tried to strike Curio's name from the rolls
of the Senate. Piso, the other censor, had resisted. There had been an
angry debate in the Senate, and Marcellus had inveighed against the
Caesarian tribune, and had joined in a furious war of words. The Senate
had voted to allow Curio to keep his seat; and the anti-Caesarians had
paraded in mourning as if the vote were a great calamity.

Curio's eyes lit up with an angry fire.

"Lump of filth! Who was he, to disoblige you!"

"You will understand," said Fabia, still quietly; and then briefly she
told of the conspiracy against the life of Drusus, so far as she had
gathered it.

"Where did you learn all this," queried Curio, "if I may venture to
ask?"

"From Agias, the slave of Cornelia, niece of Lentulus."

"But what is Drusus to her?" demanded the marvelling tribune.

"He is everything to her. She has been trying to win her way into
Ahenobarbus's confidence, and learn all of the plot."

A sudden light seemed to break over the face of the politician. He
actually smiled with relieved pleasure, and cried, "_Papae!_ Wonderful!
I may be the farthest of all the world from Diogenes the Cynic; but a
man cannot go through life, unless he has his eyes shut, and not know
that there are different kinds of women. I was sorry enough to have to
feel that a girl like Cornelia was becoming one of Clodia's coterie.
After all, the world isn't so bad as we make it out to be, if it is
Curio the profligate who says it."

"But Drusus, my nephew?"