nno
went on talking a cheerful monologue of frothy gossip. I asked him about
the Emperor.

"As fretful as possible," he said. "The trouble with Commodus is that he
is growing tired of exhibiting himself as an athlete to invited audiences
in the Palace. He is perfectly frantic to show himself off in the Circus
or in the Amphitheatre. He oscillates between the determination to
disregard convention and to do as he likes and virtuous resolutions, when
he has been given a good talking-to by his old councillors and has made up
his mind to behave properly. He will break out yet into public exhibitions
of himself. He is really pathetically unhappy over his hard lot and
positively wails about the amount of his time which is taken up with State
business and about the pitifully small opportunity he has for training and
exercise."

My bath was broken off, sooner than I had intended, by the appearance of
one of the kitchen-boys, who asked for me so tragically and so urgently
and was so positive that no one else would suffice, that I went down into
the kitchen in a towering rage at being interrupted and wondering why on
earth I could be needed. I found Ofatulena, wife of the Villa-farm
bailiff, in violent altercation with my head-cook. He asserted that she
had no business in his kitchen and must get out. Her contention was that
she, as bailiff's wife, was above all slaves whatever, that she knew her
place and that when a distinguished stranger visited the Villa she would
show him what old-fashioned Sabine cooking was like, so she would. The
cook had had, through Agathemer, my directions for a formal dinner and he
declared that one more guest made no difference and that his dinner was
good enough for anybody. I compromised by telling him to continue as he
had planned, but to allow Ofatulena to prepare one dish for each course
and to add to each one of her own. I was rather pleased at her intrusion,
for there was no better cook in Sabinum, and anything old-fashioned was
sure to be a novelty to Tanno.

I found Tanno on the terrace, basking comfortably in the late sunshine and
gazing down the valley.

"What is that big hill away off to the East?" he asked.

"That is on the Aemilian property," I answered. "Villa Aemilia has a
direct outlet to the Via Valeria and the Aemilian Estate does not belong
to this neighborhood at all. It runs back to the Tolenus and mostly drains
and slopes that way. Huge as the Vedian estates are, and though