he asked eagerly--

"Momentous to the Republic--to Rome, my good friend?"--for all his mind was
bent on discovering the plots, which he suspected even now to be in
process against the state.

"Momentous to yourself, Consul," answered Arvina.

"Then will it wait," returned the other, with a slight look of
disappointment, "and I will pray you to remain, until I have spoken with
all my friends here. It will not be very long, for I have seen nearly all
the known faces. If you are, in the mean time, addicted to the humane
arts, Davus here will conduct you to my library, where you shall find food
for the mind; or if you have not breakfasted, my Syrian will shew you
where some of my youthful friends are even now partaking a slight meal."

Accepting the first offer, partly perhaps from a sort of pardonable
hypocrisy, desiring to make a favourable impression on the great man, with
whom he had for the first time spoken, Arvina followed the intelligent and
civil freedman to the library, which was indeed the favourite apartment of
the studious magistrate. And, if he half repented, as he went by the
chamber wherein several youths of patrician birth, one or two of whom
nodded to him as he passed, were assembled, conversing merrily and jesting
around a well spread board, he ceased immediately to regret the choice he
had made, when the door was thrown open, and he was ushered into the
shrine of Cicero's literary leisure.

The library was a small square apartment; for it must be remembered that
books at this time being multiplied by manual labor only, and the art
being comparatively rare and very costly, the vast collections of modern
times were utterly beyond the reach of individuals; and a few scores of
volumes were more esteemed than would be as many thousands now, in these
days of multiplying presses and steam power. But although inconsiderable
in size, not being above sixteen feet square, the decorations of the
apartment were not to be surpassed or indeed equalled by anything of
modern splendor; for the walls,(4) divided into compartments by mouldings,
exquisitely carved and overlaid with burnished gilding, were set with
panels of thick plate glass glowing in all the richest hues of purple,
ruby, emerald, and azure, through several squares of which the light stole
in, gorgeously tinted, from the peristyle, there being no distinction
except in this between the windows and the other compartments of the
wainscot, if it may be so s