‘Yes! but it brings us next morning to a new death.’

’Why, the next morning is unpleasant, I own; but, then, if it were not so, one would never be inclined to read.  I study betimes—­because, by the gods!  I am generally unfit for anything else till noon.’

‘Fie, Scythian!’

‘Pshaw! the fate of Pentheus to him who denies Bacchus.’

’Well, Sallust, with all your faults, you are the best profligate I ever met:  and verily, if I were in danger of life, you are the only man in all Italy who would stretch out a finger to save me.’

’Perhaps I should not, if it were in the middle of supper.  But, in truth, we Italians are fearfully selfish.’

‘So are all men who are not free,’ said Glaucus, with a sigh.  ’Freedom alone makes men sacrifice to each other.’

‘Freedom, then, must be a very fatiguing thing to an Epicurean,’ answered Sallust.  ‘But here we are at our host’s.’

As Diomed’s villa is one of the most considerable in point of size of any yet discovered at Pompeii, and is, moreover, built much according to the specific instructions for a suburban villa laid down by the Roman architect, it may not be uninteresting briefly to describe the plan of the apartments through which our visitors passed.

They entered, then, by the same small vestibule at which we have before been presented to the aged Medon, and passed at once into a colonnade, technically termed the peristyle; for the main difference between the suburban villa and the town mansion consisted in placing, in the first, the said colonnade in exactly the same place as that which in the town mansion was occupied by the atrium.  In the centre of the peristyle was an open court, which contained the impluvium.

From this peristyle descended a staircase to the offices; another narrow passage on the opposite side communicated with a garden; various small apartments surrounded the colonnade, appropriated probably to country visitors.  Another door to the left on entering communicated with a small triangular portico, which belonged to the baths; and behind was the wardrobe, in which were kept the vests of the holiday suits of the slaves, and, perhaps, of the master.  Seventeen centuries afterwards were found those relics of ancient finery calcined and crumbling:  kept longer, alas! than their thrifty lord foresaw.

Return we to the peristyle, and endeavor now to present to the reader a coup d’oeil of the whole suite of apartments, which immediately stretched before the steps of the visitors.

Let him then first imagine the columns of the portico, hung with festoons of flowers; the columns themselves in the lower part painted red, and the walls around glowing with various frescoes; then, looking beyond a curtain, three parts drawn aside, the eye caught the tablinum or saloon (which was closed at will by glazed doors, now slid back into the walls).  On either side of this tablinum were small rooms,