The Unwilling Vestal

spoken of merely as "the pestilence," fell in the nine hundred and nineteenth year after the founding of Rome, the year 166 of our era, when Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus had been co-Emperors

; few cities escaped with so much as a third of the population surviving. Famine accompanied the pestilenc

power of the mass of humanity about the Mediterranean Sea; men who fought with shields and spears and swords, also with arrows and slings, believed in approximately the same sort of gods; wore clothing rather wrapped round them than upholstered on their bodies as with us; reclined on sofas at meals; lived mostly out of doors all the year round; built their houses about courtyards, and made rows of columns the chief feature of their architecture, and shel

f her Empire. Some lucky armies won occasional victories, but Rome never again put on the field an overwhelm

ns and cities. And the main point of difference between the great pestilence and the others which had preceded it was the univ

nd skill, all the culture and ingenuity in the Empire. There were so few capable men left in any line of activity that the next generation grew up practically untaught. The tradition of two thousand years was broken. In all the Mediterranean world, until centuries later, descendants of the savage invaders developed their new

oldiers had merely been a specially easy prey to the pestilence already abroad in Rome. Whichever was true, the veterans died like flies. So did the residents of Rome. Whole blocks of tenements were emptied of their last occupier and stood wholly vacant; many palaces of the wealthy were left without so much as a guardian, the last inmate dead; the splendid furnishings, even the silver plate, untouched in every room; for the plague had so ravag

ng relations left her. The other five had lost every

sins were all among the victims. This left her grave and sobe

usly rich, one of the w

very rich, it left Almo, Vocco a

ome degree, the city dwellers plucked up heart, the refugees began to return to their town houses, hunger and terror were forgotten, industry and commerce rallied, bustle and activity increased from day to day, and, slowly indeed, but steadily,

ght into it many rich families fr

caused much activity in the renting and selling of prop

th black hair and brows, a complexion as if tanned and weatherbeaten and an habitual frown. He was fond of Brinnaria and unbent to her more than to most of his acquaintances. She treated him as a sort of honorary cousin and turned over to him many details of the care of her large and scattered p

to increase her capital and her income by every means within her power and at every opportunity. Yet, when Vocco came to her with offers of high prices for the various buildings which she had inherited he could induce her to arrange for the sale only of the smaller and less valuable houses, or of tho

kept his temper, held his tongue and waited for Brinnaria's mood to alter. Her sentimentality gradually waned as the prices offered steadily mounted. After long hesitation she gave orders to sell at auction the furni

e had been merry as a child. When at last she made up her mind to part with one she would not give the order to sell it until she had gone ov

at her countless bereavements rushed back over her in a flood and overwhelmed her. Sh

patient

this mood,

, once that first step taken, under the pressure of h

After the first she had no hysterical qualms, did not show any outward emotion, selected wh

empting offer for her childhood home. B

ays after his last surviving son. During the lengthy interval the palace had stood shut fast, cared for only by a few slaves, and those not

o it. She named a day on which she meant to face the ordeal, asked Vocco to order the palace swept and dusted, an

ut in her litter with eight Cilician bearers, her lic

ay, told them to wait for her in the peristyle, shut herself in and had a long, hard cry; precisely as if she had been, as

ing water, bathed her face

e second floor took a long while, for there were

al Palace, which later towered to even seven stories, was unique in Brinnaria's time, in the posse

he rooms she found a door fast. What was more, as she tried it, sh

it all along its edge opposite its hinges, tried it at the middle, at the top, at the bottom. She

ailing of the gallery

stairs, two steps at a time; the beams of the house, even the

e door. He agreed

eak it in?"

out half trying, little

voice came h

me out, or it will be the worse for you. I'll count ten

the bolt

ded to

the door

expressing cringing cowardice, cloaked by ill-assumed ef

ng in my house?"

rned that you were proposing to sell the property. I had a curiosity to see it as it is. I found means to slip in and go over the bu

f of that rigmarole,

s," Calvaster asserted with

aria declared. "You bribed one of m

his lips presse

irs, Guntello," Br

lo was wonderfully quick. In a flash he had the intruder by th

half dozen slaves who had charge of the empty house. T

point out which one you bribed." Ca

untello," sa

and squeezes, such as schoolboys of

once and indicated

, Guntello," s

fully inquired, with the easy a

ill Tranio

m over to Olynthides to be sold at auction without a character." Her survey of her former home and her selection of the ornaments, pictures, statues,

only ladies in Rome who might not enjoy the magnificent public baths, to which all Roman society flocked every afternoon, somewhat as we moderns throng a beach at a fashionable seaside resort. Brinnaria, who loved swimming, felt the deprivation keenly. The Atriu

t him there. I have been racking my brains about it

nna declared. "It's as c

aid Brinnaria, "explain

he is t-t-tenaciously resolved to be revenged. He is on the lookout for anything that might d-d-discredit you. He hoped to s

cried Brinnaria, sh

. He's b-b-bound to impute to everybody what he would d-d-do in their p-p-pl

d Brinnaria, bewi

ume that every married woman is interested in some man b-b-besides her husband, or in almost any man, and if married women are under suspi

Brinnaria, "you

acts," Flexi

and was seated on the edge, the drops streaming off her in

re, conjectures ought to have some basis in fact. You assert, as if you know it to

own t-t-ten d-d-days and has had the old house on the C-C-

ria fl

eet, "that he might have had enough cons

o I," sai