ore her bruised and naked
breast--bruised no doubt in the vain struggle against the keepers who
disrobed her. A short distance from them, two little children, three or
four years old, bound around their waists merely by a light cord
fastened to a stake, laughed and played in the straw with the
heedlessness common to their age. The children evidently did not belong
to either of the three women.

At the other side of the stall I saw a matron of the noble carriage of
my mother Margarid. Manacles were on her wrists, shackles on her ankles.
She was standing, leaning against a beam to which she was chained by the
waist. She stood still as a statue; her grey hair disordered, her eyes
fixed, her face livid and fearful. Time and again she gave vent to a
burst of threatening and crazy laughter. Finally, at the rear of the
stall, was a cage resembling the one which I myself had occupied. In
that cage, if what the "horse-dealer" said was true, would be my two
children. Tears filled my eyes. In spite of my weakness, the thought of
my children, so close to me, caused a flush of warmth to rise to my
face--a symptom of my returning powers.

And now, Sylvest, my son, you for whom I write this report, read slowly
what is now about to follow. Aye, read slowly, to the end that every
word may imbue your soul with its indelible hatred for the Romans--a
hatred that I feel certain must some day, the day of vengeance, break
out with terrific force. Read, my son, and you will understand how your
mother, after having given life to you and your sister, after having
heaped all her tenderness upon you, could in the end give you no
stronger proof of her maternal love than by endeavoring to kill you, to
the end that she might carry you hence, to return to life in the other
world at her side and in the circle of our family. Alas! You survived
her foresight!

This, my son, is what happened!

I had my eyes fixed on the cage in which I surmised you and your sister
were imprisoned, when I saw an old man, richly dressed, enter the stall.
It was the rich patrician Trymalcion, worn out as much by debauchery as
by years. His dull, cold, corpse-like eyes seemed to look into vacancy.
His hideously wrinkled visage was half hidden under a coat of thick
paint. He wore a frizzled yellow wig, earrings blazing with precious
stones, and in the girdle of his robe a large bouquet, of which his red
plush mantle off and on allowed a glimpse.[30] He painfully dragged hi