Roads from Rome | Page 6

the army is but a bright spot in the valley, adding beauty,
it may well be, to a sombre scene. And so, ascending into the serene
citadel of Knowledge and looking down upon our noisy griefs, we may
find them to be but high lights, ennobling life's monotonous plain. My
friend, come to Nature and learn of her. Surely Valerius would have
wished you peace."
"Peace, peace!" Catullus groaned aloud. Lucretius seemed as remote as
the indifferent gods. Valerius, who knew his feet were shaped for
human ways, would have understood that he could not scale the cold
steeps of thought. If he suffered in this hour, what comfort was there in
the thought of other suffering and other years? If Troy now held
Valerius, what peace was there in knowing that its accursed earth once
covered Hector and Patroclus also, and would be forever the common
grave of Asia and of Europe? What healing had nature or law to give
when flesh was torn from flesh and heart estranged from heart beyond
recall?
Rising, Catullus looked down upon the unresting river. As he walked
homeward, clear-eyed, at last, but unassuaged, he knew that for him
also there could never again be peaceful currents. Like the Adige, his
tumultuous grief, having its source in the pure springs of childish love,
must surge through the years of his manhood, until at last it might lose
itself in the vast sea of his own annihilation.
II
In the capital a dull winter was being prophesied. Only one gleam was

discoverable in the social twilight. The Progressives had shipped Cato
off to Cyprus and society was rid for one season of a man with a tongue,
who believed in economy when money was plentiful, in sobriety when
pleasure was multiform and in domestic fidelities when escape was
easy. But they had done irreparable mischief in disposing more
summarily of Cicero. With the Conservative leader exiled to Greece
and the Progressive leader himself taking the eagles into Gaul the
winter's brilliance was threatened with eclipse. Pompey was left in
Rome, but the waning of his political star, it could not be denied, had
dimmed his social lustre. Clodius, of course, was in full swing,
triumphant in Caesar's friendship and Cicero's defeat, but if society was
able to stomach him, he himself had the audacious honesty to
foregather in grosser companionship. Even Lucullus, whose food and
wine had come to seem a permanent refuge amid political changes and
social shifts, must now be counted out. His mind was failing, and the
beautiful Apollo dining room and terraced gardens would probably
never be opened again.
In view of the impending handicaps Clodia was especially anxious that
a dinner she was to give immediately on her return from Baiae in
mid-October should be a conspicuous success. During her husband's
consulship two years ago she had won great repute for inducing men of
all parties, officials, artists and writers, to meet in her house. Last year,
owing to Metellus's sickness and death, she had not done anything on a
large scale. This autumn she had come back determined to reassume
her position. She was unaffected by the old-fashioned prejudice against
widows entertaining and she had nothing to fear from the social skill of
this year's consuls.
Her invitations had been hurried out, and now in her private sitting
room, known as the Venus Room from its choicest ornament, a
life-sized statue of Venus the Plunderer, she was looking over the
answers which had been sorted for her by her secretary. The Greek,
waiting for further orders, looked at her with admiring, if disillusioned,
eyes. Large and robust, her magnificent figure could display no
ungraceful lines as she sat on the low carved chair in front of a curtain
of golden Chinese silk. Her dress was of a strange sea-green and

emeralds shone in her ears and her heavy, black hair. An
orange-coloured cat with gleaming, yellow eyes curved its tail across
her feet. Above her right shoulder hung a silver cage containing a little
bird which chirped and twittered in silly ignorance of its mistress's
mood. Anger disfigured her beautiful mouth and eyes. The list of
regrets stretched out to sinister length and included such pillars of
society as Brutus and Sempronia, Bibulus and Portia. A cynical smile
relieved Clodia's sullen lips. Did these braggarts imagine her blind to
the fact that if lively Sempronia and stupid Bibulus could conveniently
die, Brutus and Portia, who were wiping her off their visiting lists
because her feet had strayed beyond the marriage paddock, would make
short work of their mourning?
Aurelia's declination she had expected. Her inordinate pride in being
Caesar's mother had not modified her arrogant, old-time severity
toward the freedom of modern life. But that Calpurnia should plead her
husband's