“Yes,” said Fabia, also very pale, yet smiling with a sweet, grave smile—­the smile of a goddess who grieves at the miseries of mortal men, yet with divine omniscience glances beyond, and sees the happiness evolved from pain.  “Yes, I have heard of all that is passing in the Senate.  And I know, too, that my Quintus will prove himself a Fabian and a Livian, to whom the right cause and the good of the Republic are all—­and the fear of shame and death is nothing.”  And then she sat down with him upon a couch, and took his head in her lap, and stroked him as if she were his mother.  “Ah! my Quintus,” she said, “you are still very young, and it is easy for one like you to enlist with all your ardour in a cause that seems righteous; yes, and in the heat of the moment to make any sacrifice for it; but it is not so easy for you or any other man calmly to face shame and annihilation, when the actual shadow of danger can be seen creeping up hour by hour.  I know that neither you nor many another man wise and good believes that there are any gods.  And I—­I am only a silly old woman, with little or no wisdom and wit—­”

“Not silly and not old, carissima!” interrupted Drusus, smiling at her self-depreciation.

“We won’t argue,” said Fabia, in a bit lighter vein.  “But—­as I would say—­I believe in gods, and that they order all things well.”

“Why, then,” protested the young man, “do we suffer wrong or grief?  If gods there are, they are indifferent; or, far worse, malevolent, who love to work us woe.”

Again Fabia shook her head.

“If we were gods,” said she, “we would all be wise, and could see the good to come out of every seeming evil.  There!  I am, as I said, silly and old, and little enough comfort can words of mine bring a bright young man whose head is crammed with all the learned lore of the schools of Athens.  But know this, Quintus, so long as I live, you shall live in my heart—­living or dead though you be.  And believe me, the pleasure of life is but a very little thing; it is sweet, but how quickly it passes!  And the curses or praises of men—­these, too, only a few mouldy rolls of books keep for decay!  What profits it to Miltiades this hour, that a few marks on a papyrus sheet ascribe to him renown; or how much is the joy of Sextus Tarquinius darkened because a group of other marks cast reproach upon his name?  If so be death is a sleep, how much better to feel at the end, ’I die, but I die self-approved, and justified by self!’ And if death is not all a sleep; if, as Socrates tells us, there are hopes that we but pass from a base life to another with less of dross, then how do pleasures and glories, griefs and dishonours, of this present life touch upon a man whose happiness or woe will be found all within?”