about was one city of stately villas, of
cool groves, of bright gardens; a huge pleasure world, where freedom
too often became license; where the dregs of the nectar cup too often
meant physical ruin and moral death.

Cornelia had lost all desire to die now. She no longer thought of
suicide. Lentulus's freedmen held her in close surveillance, but she
was very happy. Drusus lived, was safe, would do great things, would
win a name and a fame in the world of politics and arms. For herself
she had but one ambition--to hear men say, "This woman is the wife of
the great Quintus Drusus." That would have been Elysium indeed.
Cornelia, in fact, was building around her a world of sweet fantasy,
that grew so real, so tangible, that the stern realities of life,
realities that had hitherto worn out her very soul, became less
galling. The reaction following the collapse of the plot against
Drusus had thrown her into an unnatural cheerfulness. For the time the
one thought when she arose in the morning, the one thought when she
fell asleep at night, was, "One day," or "One night more is gone, of
the time that severs me from Quintus." It was a strained, an unhealthy
cheerfulness; but while it lasted it made all the world fair for
Cornelia. Indeed, she had no right--from one way of thinking--not to
enjoy herself, unless it be that she had no congenial companions. The
villa of the Lentuli was one of the newest and finest at Baiae. It
rested on a sort of breakwater built out into the sea, so that the
waves actually beat against the embankment at the foot of Cornelia's
chamber. The building rose in several stories, each smaller than the
one below it, an ornamental cupola highest of all. On the successive
terraces were formally plotted, but luxuriant, gardens. Cornelia, from
her room in the second story, could command a broad vista of the bay.
Puteoli was only two miles distant. Vesuvius was ten times as far; but
the eye swept clear down the verdant coast toward Surrentum to the
southward. At her feet was the sea,--the Italian, Neapolitan
sea,--dancing, sparkling, dimpling from the first flush of morning to
the last glint of the fading western clouds at eve. The azure above
glowed with living brightness, and by night the stars and planets
burned and twinkled down from a crystalline void, through which the
unfettered soul might soar and soar, swimming onward through the sweet
darkness of the infinite.

And there were pleasures enough for C