ch upon his name? If so be
death is a sleep, how much better to feel at the end, 'I die, but I
die self-approved, and justified by self!' And if death is not all a
sleep; if, as Socrates tells us, there are hopes that we but pass from
a base life to another with less of dross, then how do pleasures and
glories, griefs and dishonours, of this present life touch upon a man
whose happiness or woe will be found all within?"

And so the good woman talked, giving to Drusus her own pure faith and
hope and courage; and when the intellectual philosopher within him
revolted at some of her simple premises and guileless sophistries,
against his will he was persuaded by them, and was fain to own to
himself that the heart of a good woman is past finding out; that its
impulses are more genuine, its intuitions truer, its promptings surer,
than all the fine-spun intellectuality of the most subtle
metaphysician. When at last Drusus rose to leave his aunt, his face
was glowing with a healthy colour, his step was elastic, his voice
resonant with a noble courage. Fabia embraced him again and again.
"Remember, whatever befalls," were her parting words, "I shall still
love you." And when Drusus went out of the house he saw the dignified
figure of the Vestal gazing after him. A few minutes later he passed
no less a personage than the consular Lucius Domitius on his way to
some political conference. He did not know what that dignitary
muttered as he swept past in spotless toga, but the gloomy ferocity of
his brow needed no interpreter. Drusus, however, never for a moment
gave himself disquietude. He was fortified for the best and the worst,
not by any dumb resignation, not by any cant of philosophy, but by an
inward monitor which told him that some power in some way would lead
him forth out of all dangers in a manner whereof man could neither ask
nor think.

* * * * *

On the sixth of January the debate, as already said, drew toward its
end. All measures of conciliation had been voted down; the crisis was
close at hand. On the seventh, after his interview with Fabia, Drusus
went back to his own lodgings, made a few revisions in his will, and
in the presence of two or three friends declared Cappadox
manumitted,[143] lest he, by some chance, fall into the clutches of a
brutal master. The young man next wrote a long letter to Cornelia for
Agias to forward to Baiae, and put in it such hope as he could glean
from t