her extinguished lamp.

Bellona gashes her cheeks without causing the blood, which used to
purify her devotees, to flow out.

_Antony_--"Pardon! They weary me!"

_Hilarion_--"Formerly they used to be entertaining!"

And he points out to Antony, in a grove of beech-trees a woman perfectly
naked--with four paws like a beast--bestridden by a black man holding in
each hand a torch.

"This is the goddess Aricia with the demon Virbius. Her priest, the
monarch of the woods, happened to be an assassin; and the fugitive
slaves, the despoilers of corpses, the brigands of the Salarian road,
the cripples of the Sublician bridge, all the vermin of the garrets of
the Suburra, had not dearer devotion!

"The patrician ladies of Mark Antony's time preferred Libitina."

And he shows him under the cypresses and rose-trees another woman
clothed in gauze. She smiles, though she is surrounded by pickaxes,
litters, black hangings, and all the utensils of funerals. Her diamonds
glitter from afar among cobwebs. The Larvae, like skeletons, display
their bones amid the branches, and the Lemures, who are phantoms, spread
out their bats' wings.

On the side of a field the god Terma is bent down, torn asunder, and
covered with filth.

In the midst of a ridge the huge corpse of Vertumnus is being devoured
by red dogs. The rustic gods depart weeping, Sartor, Sarrator,
Vervactor, Eollina, Vallona, and Hostilenus--all covered with little
hooded cloaks, and each bearing a mattock, a fork, a hurdle, and a
boar-spear.

_Hilarion_--"It was their spirits that made the villa prosper with its
dove-cotes, its park for dormice, its poultry-yards protected by snares,
and its hot stables embalmed with cedar.

"They protected all the wretched people who dragged the fetters with
their legs over the pebbles of the Sabina, those who called the hogs
with the sound of the trumpet, those who gathered the grapes on the tops
of the elm-trees, those who drove through the by-roads the asses laden
with dung. The husbandman, while he panted over the handle of his
plough, prayed to them to strengthen his arms; and the cow-herds, in the
shadow of the lime-trees, beside gourds of milk, chanted their eulogies
by turns upon flutes of reeds."

Antony sighs.

And in the middle of a chamber, upon a platform, a bed of ivory is
revealed, surrounded by persons lifting up pine-torches.

"Those are the gods of marriage. They are awaiting the bride.

"Domiduca has to lea