bus and his Greek coadjutors, there was still a great dread
which would steal over Drusus lest at any moment a stroke might fall.
Those were days when children murdered parents, wives husbands, for
whim or passion, and very little came to punish their guilt. The
scramble for money was universal. Drusus looked forth into the world,
and saw little in it that was good. He had tried to cherish an ideal,
and found fidelity to it more than difficult. His philosophy did not
assure him that a real deity existed. Death ended all. Was it not
better to be done with the sham of life; to drink the Lethe water, and
sink into eternal, dreamless slumber? He longed unspeakably to see
Cornelia face to face; to kiss her; to press her in his arms; and the
desire grew and grew.

She was no longer in the capital. Her uncle had sent her away--guarded
by trusty freedmen--to the villa of the Lentuli at Baiae. The
fashionable circles of the great city had made of her name a three
days' scandal, of which the echo all too often came to Drusus's
outraged ears. His only comfort was that Ahenobarbus had become the
butt and laughing-stock of every one who knew of his repulse by his
last inamorata. Then at last Drusus left Praeneste for Rome.
Ahenobarbus and Pratinas were as well checked as it was possible they
could be, and there was no real ground to dread assassination while in
the city, if moderate precautions were taken. Then too the time was
coming when the young man felt that he could accomplish something
definite for the party for which he had already sacrificed so much.

The events clustering around Dumnorix's unsuccessful attack had made
Drusus a sort of hero in the eyes of the Praenesteans. They had years
before elected his father as their patron, their legal representative
at Rome, and now they pitched upon the son, proud to have this highly
honourable function continued in the same family. This election gave
Drusus some little prestige at the capital, and some standing in the
courts and politics. When he went to Rome it was not as a mere
individual who had to carve out his own career, but as a man of honour
in his own country, a representative of a considerable local interest,
and the possessor of both a noble pedigree and an ample fortune.

Curio found him plenty to do; wire-pulling, speech-making, private
bargaining,--all these were rife, for everybody knew that with the
first of January, when Lentulus became consul, the fortunes of Ca