meet; perhaps gross and greedy
like Satronius Satro, perhaps dwarfish and mean like Vedius Vedianus,
probably like anyone of the avaricious magnates, associated with
Pullanius, whom I had met while impersonating Salsonius Salinator.

I resented the possibility of an Imperial jest. I was more and more dazed
and puzzled the nearer I approached the inevitable interview and the
nearer I approached it the more futile and hopeless it seemed and the more
despondent I grew.

The page paused at a door, opened it, waved me in and shut it.

I was in a small parlor, and there was no other man in it; I saw only one
seated human figure, a woman, a lady, a graceful young woman, a charming
young woman.

Then, suddenly, I saw through it all.

My troubles were indeed at an end.

I recognized Vedia!

EPILOGUE

I do not think it necessary to describe in detail my marriage to Vedia,
nor our dinners at Nemestronia's, at Tanno's, at Segontius Almo's; nor the
dinners we gave at my old home, after it had been fitted up to our liking,
all trace of its occupancy by tenants effaced and we had settled there.

Why tell at length of my manumission of Agathemer, of my endowment of him
with a goodly share of my heritage from poor Falco, or of his disposition
of Falco's gems and his rapid acquisition of vast wealth and of his
continued prosperity?

When my misfortunes began Nemestronia was past her eighty-fourth birthday.
After my rehabilitation Vedia and I helped at the celebration of her
ninety-fifth, and of three more.

Nemestronia lived almost to her hundredth birthday, in full possession of
her faculties and, until near the end, in marvellously good health. She is
still remembered as having been the oldest noble matron ever known in
Rome.

Like her, Chryseros Philargyrus, though long past the usual term of human
life when my disasters overtook us, survived my nine winters of adventures
and lived to greet me as a son rearisen from the dead, in the tenth summer
after he had sped me on my way in the midnight woods from Ducconius
Furfur's land.

Enough to say that Vedia and I, from a second-floor balcony, watched pass
the triumphal procession of our great Prince of the Republic, Septimius
Severus, when he returned victorious over both his rivals and reentered
Rome, indubitably master of the world.

As to my later life I cannot forbear remarking that I am the only man with
pierced ears who ever mingled as an equal with the bat