iercely on the ashes.

II

The day at the villa had been the most trying one of a trying week
for Pliny and Calpurnia. A restful house-party of their dearest
friends had been spoiled by the arrival of Quadratilla, heralded by
one of her incredible letters dated at Baiae:

"I lost at the dice last night," she had written. "The dancers from
Cadiz had thick ankles. The oysters were not above suspicion and the
sows'-bellies were unseasoned. We have exhausted the love affairs
and debts of our neighbours, and made each other's wills. (I am to
leave my money--I rely on you to tell Quadratus--to a curled darling
here who hums Alexandrian dance tunes divinely). And we have
discussed _ad nauseam_ the rainfall in Upper Egypt, the number of
legions on the Rhine and the ships in from Africa. That clever Spanish
friend of yours--what was his name?--Martial--was quite right about
our conversations. It is a pity he had to pay out his obol for the
longer journey before he could get back to Rome.

"My digestion demands fresh eggs and lettuce to the rhythm of
hexameters. Or is it sapphics to which we eat this year? I must know
what the next crop of the stylus is to be. I cannot sleep at night
for wondering who is to teach in your new school. Will he be as merry
a guide as your Quintilian was? And will the Como boys become
sparkling little Plinies?

"I must see the grown-up Pliny's noble brow and my Calpurnia's
eyes--and the Tartarean frown of Tacitus, who, I hear, is with you.
Quadratus says you are at the smallest of your Como villas. The mood
suits me. At Tusculum or Tibur or Praeneste or Laurentum you might
have longed for me in vain. In your Arcadian retreat expect me on
the tenth day."

The hale old woman took a terrible advantage of her years and her
tongue to do as she chose among her acquaintances. And Pliny was more
or less at her mercy, because his mother and she had been friends
in their girlhood, and because her grandson, Quadratus, was among
the closest of his own younger friends. Unluckily, too, she had taken
a violent fancy to Calpurnia. She spared her none of her flings, but
evidently in some strange way the exquisite breeding and candid
goodness of the younger woman appealed to her antipodal nature. She
had lived riotously through seven imperial reigns, gambling, owning
and exhibiting pantomimes, nourishing all manner of luxurious whims,
whether the state lay gasping under a Nero or Domitian, or breathed
once m