e property of all the citizens."[572]

Sec. XI. The Roman Senate had been discussing for several days a secret
matter, and there was much doubt and suspicion about it. And one of the
senator's wives, discreet in other matters but a very woman in
curiosity, pressed her husband close, and entreated him to tell her what
the secret was; she vowed and swore she would not divulge it, and did
not refrain from shedding tears at her not being trusted. And he,
nothing loth to convince her of her folly, said, "Your importunity,
wife, has prevailed, listen to a dreadful and portentous matter. It has
been told us by the priests that a lark has been seen flying in the air
with a golden helmet and spear: it is this portent that we are
considering and discussing with the augurs, as to whether it be a good
or bad omen. But say nothing about it." Having said these words he went
into the Forum. But his wife seized on the very first of her maids that
entered the room, and smote her breast, and tore her hair, and said,
"Alas! for my husband and country! What will become of us?" wishing and
teaching her maid to say, "Whatever's up?" So when she inquired she told
her all about it, adding that refrain common to all praters, "Tell no
one a word about it." The maid however had scarce left her mistress when
she told one of her fellow-servants who was doing little or nothing, and
she told her lover who happened to call at that moment. So the news
spread to the Forum so quickly that it got the start of its original
author, and one of his friends meeting him said, "Have you only just
left your house?" "Only just," he replied. "Didn't you hear the news?"
said his friend. "What news?" said he. "Why, that a lark has been seen
flying in the air with a golden helmet and spear, and the Senate are met
to discuss the portent." And he smiled and said to himself, "You are
quick, wife, for the tale to get before me to the Forum!" Then meeting
some of the Senators he disabused them of their panic. But to punish his
wife, he said when he got home, "You have undone me, wife: for the
secret has got abroad from my house, so that I must be an exile from my
country for your inability to keep a secret." And on her trying to deny
it, and saying, "Were there not three hundred Senators that heard of it
as well as you? Might not one of them have divulged it?" he replied,
"Stuff o' your three hundred! It was at your importunity that I invented
the story, to put you to the t