Although he believed himself safe at last from the wiles of Ahenobarbus and his Greek coadjutors, there was still a great dread which would steal over Drusus lest at any moment a stroke might fall.  Those were days when children murdered parents, wives husbands, for whim or passion, and very little came to punish their guilt.  The scramble for money was universal.  Drusus looked forth into the world, and saw little in it that was good.  He had tried to cherish an ideal, and found fidelity to it more than difficult.  His philosophy did not assure him that a real deity existed.  Death ended all.  Was it not better to be done with the sham of life; to drink the Lethe water, and sink into eternal, dreamless slumber?  He longed unspeakably to see Cornelia face to face; to kiss her; to press her in his arms; and the desire grew and grew.

She was no longer in the capital.  Her uncle had sent her away—­guarded by trusty freedmen—­to the villa of the Lentuli at Baiae.  The fashionable circles of the great city had made of her name a three days’ scandal, of which the echo all too often came to Drusus’s outraged ears.  His only comfort was that Ahenobarbus had become the butt and laughing-stock of every one who knew of his repulse by his last inamorata.  Then at last Drusus left Praeneste for Rome.  Ahenobarbus and Pratinas were as well checked as it was possible they could be, and there was no real ground to dread assassination while in the city, if moderate precautions were taken.  Then too the time was coming when the young man felt that he could accomplish something definite for the party for which he had already sacrificed so much.

The events clustering around Dumnorix’s unsuccessful attack had made Drusus a sort of hero in the eyes of the Praenesteans.  They had years before elected his father as their patron, their legal representative at Rome, and now they pitched upon the son, proud to have this highly honourable function continued in the same family.  This election gave Drusus some little prestige at the capital, and some standing in the courts and politics.  When he went to Rome it was not as a mere individual who had to carve out his own career, but as a man of honour in his own country, a representative of a considerable local interest, and the possessor of both a noble pedigree and an ample fortune.

Curio found him plenty to do; wire-pulling, speech-making, private bargaining,—­all these were rife, for everybody knew that with the first of January, when Lentulus became consul, the fortunes of Caesar were to be made or marred irretrievably.  There were rumours, always rumours, now of Caesar, now of Pompeius.  The proconsul was going to march on Rome at once, and put all his enemies to the sword.  Pompeius was to be proclaimed dictator and exterminate all who adhered to the anti-senatorial party.  And into this melee of factions Drusus threw himself, and found relief and inspiration in the conflict.  His innate common-sense, a very considerable talent for oratory which had received a moderate training, his energy, his enthusiasm, his incorruptibility, his straightforwardness, all made him valuable to the Caesarians, and he soon found himself deep in the counsels of his party, although he was too young to be advanced as a candidate for any public office.