“Insolence!” cried Gabinius, seizing a staff, and beating first one, then the other, of his servants indiscriminately; and so he continued to vent his vexation, until Fabia’s litter was well inside the Porta Capena.

II

Fabia had thus escaped from the clutches of Gabinius, and the latter was sullen and foiled.  But none the less the Vestal was in a tremor of fear for the consequences of her meeting with the libertine.  She knew that Gabinius was determined, dexterous, and indefatigable; that he was baffled, but not necessarily driven to throw over his illicit quest.  And Fabia realized keenly that going as she had unattended into a strange house, and remaining there some time with no friendly eye to bear witness to her actions, would count terribly against her, if Gabinius was driven to bay.  She dared not, as she would gladly have done, appear before the pontifices and demand of them that they mete out due punishment on Gabinius for grossly insulting the sanctity of a Vestal.  Her hope was that Gabinius would realize that he could not incriminate her without ruining himself, and that he had been so thoroughly terrified on reflection as to what might be the consequences to himself, if he tried to follow the intrigue, that he would prudently drop it.  These considerations hardly served to lighten the gloom which had fallen across Fabia’s life.  It was not so much the personal peril that saddened her.  All her life she had heard the ugly din of the world’s wickedness pass harmlessly over her head, like a storm dashing at the doors of some secluded dwelling that shielded its inhabitants from the tempest.  But now she had come personally face to face with the demon of impurity; she had felt the fetid touch almost upon herself; and it hurt, it sickened her.  Therefore it was that the other Vestals marvelled, asking what change had come over their companion, to quench the mild sunshine of her life; and Fabia held little Livia very long and very closely in her arms, as if it were a solace to feel near her an innocent little thing “unspotted of the world.”

All this had happened a very few days before the breathless Agias came to inform Fabia of the plot against her nephew.  Perhaps, as with Cornelia, the fact that one near and dear was in peril aided to make the consciousness of her own unhappiness less keen.  None could question Fabia’s resolute energy.  She sent Agias on his way, then hurried off in her litter in quest of Caius Marcellus, the consul.  AEmilius Paulus, the other consul, was a nonentity, not worth appealing to, since he had virtually abdicated office upon selling his neutrality to Caesar.  But Marcellus gave her little comfort.  She broke in upon the noble lord, while he was participating in a drunken garden-party in the Gardens of Lucullus.  The consul—­hardly sober enough to talk coherently—­had declared that it was impossible to start any troops that day to Praeneste.  “To-morrow, when he had time, he would consider the matter.”  And Fabia realized that the engine of government would be very slow to set in motion in favour of a marked Caesarian.