espite of his better thoughts, by
the fatal oath which bound him to the arch traitor.

While he was sitting in his lonely chamber, with his untasted meal of ripe
figs, and delicate white bread, and milk and honeycomb before him,
devouring his own heart in his fiery anguish, and striving with all his
energies of intellect to devise some scheme by which he might escape the
perils that seemed to hem him round on every side, his faithful freedman
entered, bearing a little billet, on which his eye had scarcely fallen
before he recognized the shapely characters of Julia's well-known writing.

He broke the seal which connected the flaxen band, and with a trembling
eye, and a soul that feared it knew not what, from the very consciousness
of guilt, he read as follows:

"A day has passed, my Paullus, and we have not met! The first day in which
we have not met and conversed together, since that whereon you asked me to
be yours! I would not willingly, my Paul, be as those miserable and most
foolish girls, of whom my mother has informed me, who, given up to
jealousy and doubt, torment themselves in vain, and alienate the noble
spirits, which are bound to them by claims of affection only, not of
compulsion or restraint. Nor am I so unreasonable as to think, that a man
has no duties to perform, other than to attend a woman's leisure. The Gods
forbid it! for whom I love, I would see great, and famous, and esteemed in
the world's eyes as highly as in mine! The house, it is true, is our
sphere--the Forum and the Campus, the great world with its toils, its
strifes, and its honors, yours! All this I speak to myself often. I
repeated it many, many times yesterday--it ought to have satisfied me--it
did satisfy my reason, Paul, but it spoke not to my heart! That whispers
ever, 'he came not yesterday to see me! he promised, yet he came not!' and
it will not be answered. Are you sick, Paullus, that you came not? Surely
in that case you had sent for me. Hortensia would have gone with me to
visit you. No! you are not sick, else most surely I had known it! Are you
then angry with me, or offended? Unconscious am I, dearest, of any fault
against you in word, thought, or deed. Yet will I humble myself, if you
are indeed wroth with me. Have I appeared indifferent or cold? oh! Paul,
believe it not. If I have not expressed the whole of my deep tenderness
which is poured out all, all on thee alone--my yearning and continued love,
that counts the minutes