‘Hush, gentlemen!’ said Pansa; ’do you not know that Clodius is employed at the house of Diomed in blowing hard at the torch?  It begins to burn, and will soon shine bright on the shrine of Hymen.’

‘Is it so?’ said Lepidus.  ‘What!  Clodius become a married man?—­Fie!’

‘Never fear,’ answered Clodius; ’old Diomed is delighted at the notion of marrying his daughter to a nobleman, and will come down largely with the sesterces.  You will see that I shall not lock them up in the atrium.  It will be a white day for his jolly friends, when Clodius marries an heiress.’

‘Say you so?’ cried Lepidus; ’come, then, a full cup to the health of the fair Julia!’

While such was the conversation—­one not discordant to the tone of mind common among the dissipated of that day, and which might perhaps, a century ago, have found an echo in the looser circles of Paris—­while such, I say, was the conversation in the gaudy triclinium of Lepidus, far different the scene which scowled before the young Athenian.

After his condemnation, Glaucus was admitted no more to the gentle guardianship of Sallust, the only friend of his distress.  He was led along the forum till the guards stopped at a small door by the side of the temple of Jupiter.  You may see the place still.  The door opened in the centre in a somewhat singular fashion, revolving round on its hinges, as it were, like a modern turnstile, so as only to leave half the threshold open at the same time.  Through this narrow aperture they thrust the prisoner, placed before him a loaf and a pitcher of water, and left him to darkness, and, as he thought, to solitude.  So sudden had been that revolution of fortune which had prostrated him from the palmy height of youthful pleasure and successful love to the lowest abyss of ignominy, and the horror of a most bloody death, that he could scarcely convince himself that he was not held in the meshes of some fearful dream.  His elastic and glorious frame had triumphed over a potion, the greater part of which he had fortunately not drained.  He had recovered sense and consciousness, but still a dim and misty depression clung to his nerves and darkened his mind.  His natural courage, and the Greek nobility of pride, enabled him to vanquish all unbecoming apprehension, and, in the judgment-court, to face his awful lot with a steady mien and unquailing eye.  But the consciousness of innocence scarcely sufficed to support him when the gaze of men no longer excited his haughty valor, and he was left to loneliness and silence.  He felt the damps of the dungeon sink chillingly into his enfeebled frame.  He—­the fastidious, the luxurious, the refined—­he who had hitherto braved no hardship and known no sorrow.  Beautiful bird that he was! why had he left his far and sunny clime—­the olive-groves of his native hills—­the music of immemorial streams?  Why had he wantoned on his glittering plumage amidst these harsh and ungenial strangers, dazzling the eyes