“Your excellency shows me too much courtesy,” said Drusus, bowing in what was, to tell truth, some little embarrassment; “it is not fit that a young man like myself should dine at the same table with an imperator before whom nations have trembled.”

And then it was that Drusus caught his first glimpse of that noble and sententious egotism which was a characteristic of the great proconsul.

“To be a friend of Caesar is to be the peer of kings.”

Drusus bowed again, and then, with Curio, followed the attendants who were leading them to comfortably, though not sumptuously, furnished apartments.

* * * * *

Quintus Drusus in years to come sat at the boards of many great men, enjoyed their conversation, entered into their hopes and fears, but he never forgot the first dinner with the proconsul of the Gauls.  Caesar kept a double table.  His hospitality was always ready for the people of note of the district where he happened to be staying, and for his own regular army officers.  But he dined personally with such high-rank Romans and very noble Provincials as chanced to be with him from day to day.  To this last select company Drusus found himself that evening admitted; and in fact he and Curio were the proconsul’s only personal guests.  The dinner itself was more remarkable for the refinement of the whole service, the exquisite chasteness of the decorations of the dining room, the excellent cooking of the dishes, and the choiceness of the wines than for any lavish display either of a great bill of fare, or of an ostentatious amount of splendour.  The company of officers and gentlemen of the Ravenna district dined together in a spacious hall, where Drusus imagined they had a rather more bounteous repast than did the immediate guests of their entertainer.  At one end of this large hall was a broad alcove, raised a single step, and here was laid the dinner for the proconsul.  Caesar passed through the large company of his humbler guests, followed by Curio and Drusus,—­now speaking a familiar word to a favourite centurion; now congratulating a country visitor on his election to his local Senate; now introducing the new-comers to this or that friend.  And so presently Drusus found himself resting on his elbow on the same couch with Caesar, while Curio occupied the other end.  For a time the latter held by far the larger part of the conversation in his hands.  There were a myriad tales to tell of politics at the capital, a myriad warnings to give.  Caesar listened to them all; and only rarely interrupted, and then with words so terse and penetrating that Drusus marvelled.  The proconsul seemed to know the innermost life history and life motives of everything and everybody.  He described a character with an epithet; he fathomed a political problem with an expletive.  Only now and then did his words or motions betray any deep personal concern or anxiety, and once only did Drusus see him flush with passion.