icius saw one day among lordly chariots the
splendid car of Chrysothemis, preceded by two Molossian dogs; it was
surrounded by a crowd of young men and by old senators, whose position
detained them in the city. Chrysothemis, driving four Corsican ponies
herself, scattered smiles round about, and light strokes of a golden
whip; but when she saw Vinicius she reined in her horses, took him into
her car, and then to a feast at her house, which lasted all night. At
that feast Vinicius drank so much that he did not remember when they
took him home; he recollected, however, that when Chrysothemis mentioned
Lygia he was offended, and, being drunk, emptied a goblet of Falernian
on her head. When he thought of this in soberness, he was angrier still.
But a day later Chrysothemis, forgetting evidently the injury, visited
him at his house, and took him to the Appian Way a second time. Then
she supped at his house, and confessed that not only Petronius, but his
lute-player, had grown tedious to her long since, and that her heart was
free now. They appeared together for a week, but the relation did not
promise permanence. After the Falernian incident, however, Lygia's name
was never mentioned, but Vinicius could not free himself from thoughts
of her. He had the feeling always that her eyes were looking at his
face, and that feeling filled him, as it were, with fear. He suffered,
and could not escape the thought that he was saddening Lygia, or the
regret which that thought roused in him. After the first scene of
jealousy which Chrysothemis made because of two Syrian damsels whom he
purchased, he let her go in rude fashion. He did not cease at once from
pleasure and license, it is true, but he followed them out of spite, as
it were, toward Lygia. At last he saw that the thought of her did
not leave him for an instant; that she was the one cause of his evil
activity as well as his good; and that really nothing in the world
occupied him except her. Disgust, and then weariness, mastered him.
Pleasure had grown loathsome, and left mere reproaches. It seemed to him
that he was wretched, and this last feeling filled him with measureless
astonishment, for formerly he recognized as good everything which
pleased him. Finally, he lost freedom, self-confidence, and fell into
perfect torpidity, from which even the news of Caesar's coming could not
rouse him. Nothing touched him, and he did not visit Petronius till the
latter sent an invitation and h