beyond her. Various fetes and banquets
were given by Faustina, to which the young nobles were invited. She was
a beautiful woman and never for a moment forgot it, and by some mistake
or accident she got herself betrothed to three men at the same time. Two
of these fought a duel and one was killed. The third man looked on and
hoped both would be killed, for then he could have the woman. Faustina
got this third man to challenge the survivor, and then by one of those
strange somersaults of fate the unexpected occurred.

Faustina and Aurelius Antoninus were married.

It was a most queer mismating, for the man was plain, sincere and
honorable, and she was almost everything else. Yet she had wit and she
had beauty, and Aurelius had been living in the desert so long he
imagined that all women were gentle and good. The Consul was very glad
to unite his house with so fine and excellent a man as Aurelius; Lucilla
cried for two days and more and little Marcus cried because his mother
did, and neither cried because Faustina had gone away.

But grief is transient.

In a little over a year Antoninus and Faustina came back to Rome, and
brought with them a little girl baby, Faustina Second. Marcus was very
much interested in this baby, and made great plans about how they would
play together when she got older.

Among other visitors at the house of the old Consul often came the
Emperor himself. Hadrian and Verus were Spaniards and had been soldiers
together, and now Hadrian often liked to get away from the cares of
State, and in the evening hide himself from the office-seekers and
flattering parasites, in the quiet villa on Mount Coelius--he liked it
here even better than at his own wonderful gardens at Tivoli. And little
Marcus wasn't afraid of him, either. Marcus would sit on the Emperor's
knee and listen to tales about hunting wild boars and bears, or men as
wild. Then they would play tag or I-spy among the bushes and trees; and
once Marcus dared the Emperor to climb the long ladder to the lookout in
the big cedar. Hadrian accepted the challenge and climbed to the
crow's-nest and cut his initials in the trunk of the tree.

Instead of calling the boy Marcus Verus, the Emperor gave him the name
"Verissimus," which means "the open-eyed truthful one," and this name
stuck to Marcus for life.

Between Antoninus and Marcus there grew up a very close friendship.
Antoninus could scale the ladder up the tall cedar, three rungs at a
ti