After that, Catullus was thankful now to remember, he himself had talked passionately as the road slipped away under their horses’ feet.  He had told Valerius how cruel the world had been to Clodia.  Metellus had been sick all winter and had died as other men die.  He had belittled her by every indignity that a man of rank can put upon his wife, but she had borne with him patiently enough.  Because she was no Alcestis need she be called a Medea or a Clytemnestra?  And because the unspeakable Clodius had played Jupiter to his youngest sister’s Juno need Clodia be considered less than a Diana to his Apollo?  As for her lovers—­his voice broke upon the word—­she loved him, Catullus, strange as that seemed, and him only.  Of course, like all women of charm, she could play the harmless coquette with other men.  He hated the domestic woman—­Lucretius’s dun-coloured wife, for instance—­on whom no man except her mate would cast an eye.

He wanted men to fall at his Love’s feet, he thanked Aphrodite that she had the manner and the subtle fire and the grace to bring them there.  Her mind was wonderful, too, aflame, like Sappho’s, with the love of beauty.  That was why he called her Lesbia.  He had used Sappho’s great love poem (Valerius probably did not know it, but it was like a purple wing from Eros’s shoulder) as his first messenger to her, when his heart had grown hot as AEtna’s fire or the springs of Thermopylae.  She had finally consented to meet him at Allius’s house.  Afterwards she had told him that the day was marked for her also by a white stone.

If Valerius could only know how he felt!  She was the greatest lady in Rome, accoutred with wealth and prestige and incomparable beauty.  And she loved him, and was as good and pure and tender-hearted as any unmarried girl in Verona.  He was her lover, but often he felt toward her as a father might feel toward a child.  Catullus had trembled as he brought out from his inner sanctuary this shyest treasure.  And never should he forget the healing sense of peace that came to him when Valerius rode closer and put his arm around his shoulder.  “Diogenes,” he said, “your flame is still bright.  I could wish you had not fallen in love with another man’s wife, and if he were still living I should try to convince you of the folly of it.  But I know this hot heart of yours is as pure as the snow we see on the Alps in midsummer.  That is all I need to know.”  And they had ridden on in the darkness toward the lights of home.

The wind rose in a fresh wail:  “He is dead, he is dead.”  The touch of his arm was lost in the unawakening night.  His perfect speech was stilled in the everlasting silence.  A smile, both bitter and wistful, came upon Catullus’s lips as he remembered a letter he had had yesterday from Lucretius, bidding him listen to the voice of Nature who would bring him peace.  “What is so bitter,” his friend had urged, “if it comes in the end to sleep?  The wretched cannot want more of life,