Agias continued with him.  He had never formally deeded the boy to Cornelia, and now it was not safe for the lad to be sent to dwell at Baiae, possibly to fall into the revengeful clutches of Phaon, or Pratinas, or Ahenobarbus.  Drusus had rewarded Agias by giving him his freedom; but the boy had nowhere to go, and did not desire to leave Quintus’s service; so he continued as a general assistant and understrapper, to carry important letters and verbal messages, and to aid his patron in every case where quick wits or nimble feet were useful.  He went once to Baiae, and came back with a letter from Cornelia, in which she said that she was kept actually as a prisoner in her uncle’s villa, and that Lentulus still threatened to force Ahenobarbus upon her; but that she had prepared herself for that final emergency.

The letter came at a moment when Drusus was feeling the exhilaration of a soldier in battle, and the missive was depressing and maddening.  What did it profit if the crowd roared its plaudits, when he piled execration on the oligarchs from the Rostra, if all his eloquence could not save Cornelia one pang?  Close on top of this letter came another disquieting piece of information, although it was only what he had expected.  He learned that Lentulus Crus had marked him out personally for confiscation of property and death as a dangerous agitator, as soon as the Senate could decree martial law.  To have even a conditional sentence of death hanging over one is hard to bear with equanimity.  But it was too late for Drusus to turn back.  He had chosen his path; he had determined on the sacrifice; he would follow it to the end.  And from one source great comfort came to him.  His aunt, Fabia, had always seen in him her hero.  With no children of her own, with very little knowledge of the world, she had centred all her hopes and ambitions on her sister’s son; and he was not disappointing her.  She dreamed of him as consul, triumphator, and dictator.  She told him her hopes.  She applauded his sacrifice.  She told him of the worthies of old, of Camillus, of the Scipios, of Marcellus, the “Sword of Rome,” of Lucius AEmilius Paulus, and a host of others, good men and true, whose names were graven on the fabric of the great Republic, and bade him emulate them, and be her perfect Fabian and Livian.  And from his aunt Drusus gained infinite courage.  If she was not Cornelia, yet it was a boon ineffable to be able to hear a pure, loving woman tell him face to face that her heart suffered when he suffered, and that all his hopes and fears were hers.

Finally an interlude came to Quintus’s political activity.  Curio was becoming uneasy, lest his distant superior should fail to realize the full venom of the Senate party and the determination of his enemies to work his ruin.

“I must go to Ravenna,” said the politician to his young associate.  “My tribuneship is nearly run out.  Antonius and Cassius will take my place in the office.  And you, who have done so much for Caesar, must go also, for he loves to meet and to know all who are his friends.”