upper supported by columns of marble, with a long range of glass windows, at that period an unusual and expensive luxury. The doors stood wide open; and on either hand the vestibule were arranged the lictors leaning upon their fasces, while the whole space of the great Corinthian hall within, lighted from above, and adorned with vast black pillars of Lucullean marble, was crowded with the white robes of the consul's plebeian clients tendering their morning salutations; not unmixed with the crimson fringes and broad crimson facings of senatorial visitors.
Many were there with gifts of all kinds; countrymen from his Sabine farm and his Tusculan retreat, some bringing lambs; some cages full of doves; cheeses, and bowls of fragrant honey; and robes of fine white linen the produce of their daughters' looms; for whom perchance they were seeking dowers at the munificence of their noble patron; artizans of the city, with toys or pieces of furniture, lamps, writing cases, cups or vases of rich workmanship; courtiers with manuscripts rarely illuminated, the work of their most valuable slaves; travellers with gems, and bronzes, offerings known to be esteemed beyond all others by the high-minded lover of the arts, and unrivalled scholar, to whom they were presented.
These presents, after being duly exhibited to the patron himself, who was seated at the farther end of the hall, concealed from the eyes of Paullus by the intervening crowd, were consigned to the care of the various slaves, or freedmen, who stood round their master, and borne away according to their nature, to the storerooms and offices, or to the library and gallery of the consul; while kind words and a courteous greeting, and a consideration most ample and attentive even of the smallest matters brought before him, awaited all who approached the orator; whether he came empty handed, or full of gifts, to require an audience.
After a little while, Arvina penetrated far enough through the crowd to command a view of the consul's seat; and for a time he amused himself by watching his movements and manner toward each of his visitors, perhaps not altogether without reference to the conversation he had recently held with Catiline; and certainly not without a desire to observe if the tales he had heard of shameless bribery and corruption, as practiced by many of the great officers of the republic, had any confirmation in the conduct of Cicero.
But he soon saw that the courtesies of that great and virtuous man were regulated neither by the value of the gifts offered, nor by the rank of the visitors; and that his personal predilections even were not allowed to interfere with the division of his time among all worthy of his notice.
Thus he remarked that a young noble, famed for his dissoluteness and evil courses, although he brought an exquisite sculpture of Praxiteles, was received with the most marked and formal coldness, and his gift, which could not be declined, consigned almost without eliciting a glance of approbation, to the hand of a freedman; while, the next moment, as an old white-headed countryman, plainly and almost meanly clad, although with scrupulous cleanliness, approached his presence, the consul rose to meet him; and advancing a step or two took him affectionately by the hand, and asked after his family by name, and listened with profound consideration to the garrulous narrative of the good farmer, who, involved in some petty litigation, had come to seek the advice of his patron; until he sent him away happy and satisfied with the promise of his protection.
By and by his own turn arrived; and, although he was personally unknown to the orator, and the assistance of the nomenclator, who stood behind the curule chair, was required before he was addressed by name, he was received with the utmost attention; the noble house to which the young man belonged being as famous for its devotion to the common weal, as for the ability and virtue of its sons.
After a few words of ordinary compliment, Paullus proceeded to intimate to his attentive hearer that his object in waiting at his levee that morning was to communicate momentous information. The thoughtful eye of the great orator brightened, and a keen animated expression came over the features, which had before worn an air almost of lassitude; and he asked eagerly—
"Momentous to the Republic—to Rome, my good friend?"—for all his mind was bent on discovering the plots, which he suspected even now to be in process against the state.
"Momentous to yourself, Consul," answered Arvina.
"Then will it wait," returned the other, with a slight look of disappointment, "and I will pray you to remain, until I have spoken with all my friends here. It will not be very long, for I have seen nearly all the known faces. If you are, in the mean time, addicted to the humane arts, Davus here will conduct you to my library, where you shall find food for the mind; or if you have not breakfasted, my Syrian will shew you where some of my youthful friends are even now partaking a slight meal."
Accepting the first offer, partly perhaps from a sort of pardonable hypocrisy, desiring to make a favourable impression on the great man, with whom he had for the first time spoken, Arvina followed the intelligent and civil freedman to the library, which was indeed the favourite apartment of the studious magistrate. And, if he half repented, as he went by the chamber wherein several youths of patrician birth, one or two of whom nodded to him as he passed, were assembled, conversing merrily and jesting around a well spread board, he ceased immediately to regret the choice he had made, when the door was thrown open, and he was ushered into the shrine of Cicero's literary leisure.
The library was a small square apartment; for it must be remembered that books at this time being multiplied by manual labor only, and the art being comparatively rare and very costly, the vast collections of modern times were utterly beyond the reach of individuals; and a few scores of volumes were more esteemed than would be as many thousands now, in these days of multiplying presses and steam power. But although inconsiderable in size, not being above sixteen feet square, the decorations of the apartment were not to be surpassed or indeed equalled by anything of modern splendor; for the walls,4 divided into compartments by mouldings, exquisitely carved and overlaid with burnished gilding, were set with panels of thick plate glass glowing in all the richest hues of purple, ruby, emerald, and azure, through several squares of which the light stole in, gorgeously tinted, from the peristyle, there being no distinction except in this between the windows and the other compartments of the wainscot, if it may be so styled; and of the ceiling, which was finished in like manner with slabs of stained glass, between the intersecting beams of gilded scroll work.
The floor was of beautiful mosaic, partially covered by a foot-cloth woven from the finest wool, and dyed purple with the juice of the cuttle-fish; and all the furniture corresponded, both in taste and magnificence, to the other decorations of the room. A circular table of cedar wood, inlaid with ivory and brass, so that its value could not have fallen far short of ten thousand sesterces5, stood in the centre of the floor-cloth; with a bisellium, or double settle, wrought in bronze, and two beautiful chairs of the same material not much dissimilar in form to those now used. And, to conclude, a bookcase of polished maple wood, one of the doors of which stood open, displayed a rare collection of about three hundred volumes, each in its circular case of purple parchment, having the name inscribed in letters of gold, silver, or vermilion.
A noble bust in bronze of the Phidian Jupiter, with the sublime expanse of brow, the ambrosian curls and the beard loosely waving, as when he shook Olympus by his nod, and the earth trembled and the depth of Tartarus, stood on a marble pedestal facing the bookcase; and on the table, beside writing materials, leaves of parchment, an ornamental letter-case, a double inkstand and several reed pens, were scattered many gems and trinkets; signets and rings engraved in a style far surpassing any effort of the modern graver, vases of onyx and cut glass, and above all, the statue of a beautiful boy, holding a lamp of bronze suspended by a chain from his left hand, and in his right the needle used to refresh the wick.
Nurtured as he had been from his youth upward among the magnates of the land, accustomed to magnificence and luxury till he had almost fancied that the world had nothing left of beautiful or new that he had not witnessed, Paul stood awhile, after the freedman had departed, gazing with mute admiration on the richness and taste displayed in all the details of this the scholar's sanctum. The very atmosphere of the chamber, filled with the perfume of the cedar wood employed as a specific against the ravages of the moth and bookworm, seemed to the young man redolent of midnight learning; and the superb front of the presiding god, calm in the grandeur of its ineffable benignity, who appeared to his excited fancy to smile serene protection on the pursuits of the blameless consul, inspired him with