“No,” moaned Agias; “Valeria gave the orders.  My master was out.”

“Ha!” remarked Drusus to his aunt, “won’t the good man be pleased to know how his wife has killed a valuable slave in one of her tantrums?” Then aloud.  “If I can buy you of Calatinus, and give you to the Lady Cornelia, niece of Lentulus, the consul-elect, will you serve her faithfully, will you make her wish the law of your life?”

“I will die for her!” cried Agias, his despair mingled with a ray of hope.

“Where is your master?”

“At the Forum, I think, soliciting votes,” replied the boy.

“Well then, follow me,” said Drusus, “our road leads back to the Forum.  We may meet him.  If I can arrange with him, your executioners have nothing to fear from Valeria.  Come along.”

Agias followed, with his head again in a whirl.

III

The little company worked its way back to the Forum, not, as now, a half-excavated ruin, the gazing-stock for excursionists, a commonplace whereby to sum up departed greatness:  the splendid buildings of the Empire had not yet arisen, but the structures of the age were not unimposing.  Here, in plain view, was the Capitoline Hill, crowned by the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus and the Arx.  Here was the site of the Senate House, the Curia (then burned), in which the men who had made Rome mistress of the world had taken counsel.  Every stone, every basilica, had its history for Drusus—­though, be it said, at the moment the noble past was little in his mind.  And the historic enclosure was all swarming, beyond other places, with the dirty, bustling crowd, shoppers, hucksters, idlers.  Drusus and his company searched for Calatinus along the upper side of the Forum, past the Rostra, the Comitium,[52] and the Temple of Saturn.  Then they were almost caught in the dense throng that was pouring into the plaza from the busy commercial thoroughfares of the Vicus Jugarius, or the Vicus Tuscus.  But just as the party had almost completed their circuit of the square, and Drusus was beginning to believe that his benevolent intentions were leading him on a bootless errand, a man in a conspicuously white toga rushed out upon him from the steps of the Temple of Castor, embraced him violently, and imprinted a firm, garlic-flavoured kiss on both cheeks; crying at the same time heartily:—­

  [52] Comitium, assembly-place round the Rostra.

“Oh, my dear Publius Dorso, I am so glad to meet you!  How are all your affairs up in Fidenae?”

Drusus recoiled in some disgust, and began rubbing his outraged cheeks.

“Dorso?  Dorso?  There is surely some mistake, my good man.  I am known as Quintus Drusus of Praeneste.”

Before he had gotten further, his assailant was pounding and shaking a frightened-looking slave-lad who had stood at his elbow.

“The gods blast you, you worthless nomenclator![53] You have forgotten the worthy gentleman’s name, and have made me play the fool!  You may have lost me votes!  All Rome will hear of this!  I shall be a common laughing-stock! Hei! vah! But I’ll teach you to behave!” And he shook the wretched boy until the latter’s teeth rattled.