“I am ruined next Ides,” he groaned.  “Phormio the broker has only continued my loan at four per cent a month.  All my villas and furniture are mortgaged, and will be sold at auction. Mehercle, destruction stares me in the face!”

“Well, well, my dear fellow,” said Pratinas, who, having won the stakes, was in a mood to be sympathetic, “we must really see what can be done to remedy matters.”

“I can see nothing!” was his answer.

“Won’t your father come to the rescue?” put in Gabinius, between deep pulls on a beaker.

“My father!” snapped Ahenobarbus.  “Never a sesterce will I get out of him!  He’s as good as turned me adrift, and Cato my uncle is always giving him bad reports of me, like the hypocritical Stoic that Cato is.”

“By the bye,” began Gabinius again, putting down the wine-cup, “you hinted to-day that you had been cheated out of a fortune, after a manner.  Something about that Drusus of Praeneste, if I recollect.  What’s the story?”

Lucius settled down on his elbow, readjusted the cushions on the banqueting couch, and then began, interrupted by many a hiccough because of his potations.

“It is quite a story, but I won’t bore you with details.  It has quite as much to do with Cornelia, Lentulus Crus’s pretty niece, as with Drusus himself.  Here it is in short.  Sextus Drusus and Caius Lentulus were such good friends that, as you know, they betrothed their son and daughter when the latter were mere children.  To make the compact doubly strong, Sextus Drusus inserted in his will a clause like this:  ’Let my son Quintus enjoy the use of my estate and its income, until he become twenty-five and cease to be under the care of Flaccus his tutor.[58] If he die before that time, let his property go to Cornelia, the daughter of Caius Lentulus, except;’ and here Sextus left a small legacy for his own young daughter, Livia.  You see Drusus can make no will until he is five-and-twenty.  But then comes another provision.  ’If Cornelia shall marry any person save my son, my son shall at once be free to dispose of my estates.’  So Cornelia is laid under a sort of obligation also to marry Quintus.  The whole aim of the will is to make it very hard for the young people to fail to wed as their fathers wished.”

  [58] Commercial adviser required for young men under five-and-twenty.

“True,” said Gabinius; “but how such an arrangement can affect you and your affairs, I really cannot understand.”

“That is so,” continued Ahenobarbus, “but here is the other side of the matter.  Caius Lentulus was a firm friend of Sextus Drusus; he also was very close and dear to my father.  Caius desired that Cornelia wed young Drusus, and so enjoined her in his will; but out of compliment to my father, put in a clause which was something like this:  ’If Quintus Drusus die before he marry Cornelia, or refuse to marry Cornelia at the proper time, then let Cornelia