Andivius Hedulio | Page 9

to any festivity."
"How far beyond Vediamnum does he live?" Tanno enquired.
"On the other side of the Vedian lands," I explained. "His property is
over the divide towards the Tolenus, in between Villa Vedia and Villa
Aemilia."
Entedius it was, as I made sure, when he drew nearer, by his
magnificent black mare. He covered the last hundred paces at a furious
gallop, pulled up his snorting mare abruptly, and dismounted jauntily.
Plainly, at first sight, he and Tanno liked each other. When I had
introduced them they looked each other up and down appraisingly,
Entedius appearing to relish Tanno's swarthy vigor, warm coloring and
exuberant health as much as did Tanno his hard-muscled leanness and
weather-beaten complexion.

"Are you any relation to Entedia Jucunda?" Tanno queried.
"Very distant," Hirnio replied, "very distant indeed: too far for us to
call each other 'cousin.' When I am in Rome I always call on her; once
in a while she invites me to one of her very big dinners; otherwise we
never see each other."
Almost before they had exchanged greetings Mallius Vulso rounded
the house from the east and then Neponius Pomplio from the west; after
he had been presented, the two other Satronians, Bultius Seclator and
Juventius Muso, cantered up, followed closely by Fisevius Rusco and
Lisius Naepor, both adherents of the Vedian side of the feud.
As soon as the stable-boys had led off their horses we started bathwards,
delayed a moment by the arrival of a slave of Entedius, on a mule,
leading another heavily laden with two packs. We made a quick bath,
with no loitering, and at once went in to dinner. My uncle had been to
the last degree conservative and old-fashioned. He would have nothing
to do with any new inventions, save his own. So he would not hear of
any alterations in the furnishings of his villa, except those suggested by
his ideas of sanitation. Otherwise it had been kept just as my
grandfather had left it to him. In particular uncle could not be brought
to like the newly popular C-shaped dining sofas, which all Rome and
all fashionables all over Italy and the provinces had so acclaimed and
so promptly adopted along with circular-topped dining-tables. My
triclinium still held grandfather's square-topped table and the three
square sofas about it. Uncle's will, in fact, had stipulated that no
furnishings of the villa must be altered within five years of the date of
his death. As I had to adjust my formal dinners to the old style, I was
not only delighted to have Tanno with us for himself and for his jollity,
but also because he just made up the nine diners demanded by ancient
convention.
Agathemer had asked me, as a special favor, to leave the decoration of
the triclinium entirely to him, and I had agreed, when he fairly begged
me, not to enter the triclinium or even pass its door, after my noonday
siesta. When I did enter it with my guests I was dazzled. The sun had
just set and the northwestern sky was all a blaze of golden brightness,

streaked with long pink and rosy streamers of cloud, from which the
evening light, neither glaring nor dim, flooded through the big
northwestern windows. The spacious room was a bower of bloom.
Great armfuls of flowers hid the capitals of the pilasters, others their
bases; garlands--heavy, even corpulent garlands--were looped from
pilaster to pilaster; every vase was filled with flowers, the little vases
on the brackets, the big ones alternating with the statues in the niches,
the huge floor-vases in the corners: the table, the sofas, the floor, all
were strewn with smaller blossoms, tiny flowers or fresh petals of roses.
The garlands for our heads, which were offered us heaped on a tray,
were to the last degree exquisite. I adjusted mine as if in a dream. I was
dazed. I knew that the flowers could not have been supplied by our
gardens; I could not conjecture whence they came.
Agathemer, bowing and grinning, stood in the inner doorway. My eyes
questioned his.
"I have a note here," he said, "which I was enjoined not to hand you
until you had lain down to dinner."
The two second assistant waiter boys took our shoes and we disposed
ourselves on the sofas, Tanno in the place of honor, I rejoicing again
that his presence has solved, acceptably to all the rest, the otherwise
insoluble problem of to whom I should accord that location.
Agathemer handed me the note. At sight of it I recognized the
handwriting of Vedius Caspo. Of course, like my uncle before me, I
always invited to any of my formal entertainments all my neighbors
except Ducconius Furfur, our enemy, and the only neighbor with whom