noisome life of town and city was kept at bay.  The same wooden image of Bacchus hung from a pine tree in the vineyard, and the same weather-worn Ceres stood among the first grain, awaiting the promise of her sheaves.  Valerius had been asked by his father’s overseer to make inquiries about a yoke of oxen, and Catullus went off to look at the bee-hives in their sheltered corner near a wild olive tree.  When he came back he found his brother seated on a stone bench, carving an odd little satyr out of a bit of wood and talking to a fragile looking boy about twelve years old.  Valerius’s sympathetic gravity always charmed children and Catullus was not surprised to see this boy’s brown eyes lifted in eager confidence to the older face.

“So,” Valerius was saying, “you don’t think we work only to live?  I believe you are right.  You find the crops so beautiful that you don’t mind weeding, and I find Rome so beautiful that I don’t mind fighting.”  “Rome!” The boy’s face quivered and his singularly sweet voice sank to a whisper.  “Do you fight for Rome?  Father doesn’t know it, but I pray every day to the Good Goddess in the grainfield that she will let me go to Rome some day.  Do you think she will?” Valerius rose and looked down into the child’s starry eyes.  “Perhaps she will for Rome’s own sake,” he said.  “Every lover counts.  What is your name, Companion-in-arms?  I should like to know you when you come.”  “Virgil,” the boy answered shyly, colouring and drawing back as he saw Catullus.  A farm servant brought up the visitors’ horses.  “Goodbye, little Virgil,” Valerius called out, as he mounted.  “A fair harvest to your crops and your dreams.”

The brothers rode on for some time without speaking, Valerius rather sombrely, it seemed, absorbed in his own thoughts.  When he broke the silence it was to say abruptly:  “I wonder if, when he goes to Rome, he will keep the light in those eyes and the music in that young throat.”  Then he brought his horse close up to his brother’s and spoke rapidly as if he must rid himself of the weight of words.  “My Lantern Bearer, you are not going to lose your light and your music, are you?  The last time I saw Cicero he talked to me about your poetry and your gifts, which you know I cannot judge as he can.  He told me that for all your ‘Greek learning’ and your ‘Alexandrian technique’ no one could doubt the good red Italian blood in your verses, or even the homely strain of our own little town.  I confess I was thankful to hear a literary man and a friend praise you for not being cosmopolitan.  I am not afraid now of your going over to the Greeks.  But are you in danger of losing Verona in Rome?”

The gathering dusk, the day’s pure happiness, the sense of impending separation opened Catullus’s heart.  “Do you mean Clodia?” he asked straightforwardly.  “Did Cicero talk of her too?” “Not only Cicero,” Valerius had answered gently, “and not only your other friends.  Will you tell me of her yourself?” “What have you heard?” Catullus asked.  Valerius paused and then gave a direct and harsh reply:  “That she was a Medea to her husband, has been a Juno to her brother’s Jupiter and is an easy mistress to many lovers.”