His mother came to the gate and watched the springing step with which
he met the day. Her most passionate desire was that he might,
throughout his life, be spared the sorrow, the disillusionment and
the exhaustion which were her daily portion. But what chance was
there of such a desire being fulfilled? A cry from the house, half
frightened, half peevish, called her back from dreams to duties.

Marcus was the last child of a long line of independent farmers. When
he was born his father was sharing with his grandfather the
management of a prosperous estate. But before Marcus could talk
plainly the crash had come. It seemed incredible that the Emperor
in Rome should have known anything about the owners of a farm in Como.
But Domitian's evil nature lay like a blight over the whole empire,
and his cruelty, mean-spirited as well as irrational, was as likely
to touch the low as the high. Angered by some officer's careless story
of an insolent soldier's interview with Marcus's grandfather, he
used a spare moment to order the confiscation of the rich acres and
the slaves of the farm, and the imprisonment of their owner. The
imprisonment had been short, as no one was concerned to continue it
after Domitian's death. But it had been long enough to break the
victim's spirit and hasten his dotage. By this time he knew almost
nothing of what went on around him. He did not know that Domitian
had been killed and that at last men breathed freely under the good
Trajan. He was still full of old fears, pathetically unable to grasp
the joy of this tranquillity, which, like recreative sunshine,
penetrated to every corner of the exhausted empire. Nor, in fretting
over the absence of his son, did he remember the brave fight that
he had made for a livelihood as a muleteer in the Alps just above
Como, nor the manner, almost heroic, of his death.

The burden fell upon Marcus's young mother. It was no wonder that
her eyes were always tired, her hands rough and red, and her shoulders
no longer straight. The actual farmstead had been left to them, but
its former comfort now imposed only a heavy load. Once the servants
had been almost as numerous as in the great villas along the lake.
There had been stables for oxen and horses and sheep, lofts full of
hay and corn, spacious tool-rooms, store-rooms for olive oil and
fruits and wine, hen-yards and pigsties, and generous quarters for
the workmen. Most of this was now falling into decay, year by year