ed insurgent, perhaps with a price
on his head, who perhaps is speedily to die by the executioner, like
the most ignoble felon?"

"Yes," said Fabia, also very pale, yet smiling with a sweet, grave
smile--the smile of a goddess who grieves at the miseries of mortal
men, yet with divine omniscience glances beyond, and sees the
happiness evolved from pain. "Yes, I have heard of all that is passing
in the Senate. And I know, too, that my Quintus will prove himself a
Fabian and a Livian, to whom the right cause and the good of the
Republic are all--and the fear of shame and death is nothing." And
then she sat down with him upon a couch, and took his head in her lap,
and stroked him as if she were his mother. "Ah! my Quintus," she said,
"you are still very young, and it is easy for one like you to enlist
with all your ardour in a cause that seems righteous; yes, and in the
heat of the moment to make any sacrifice for it; but it is not so easy
for you or any other man calmly to face shame and annihilation, when
the actual shadow of danger can be seen creeping up hour by hour. I
know that neither you nor many another man wise and good believes that
there are any gods. And I--I am only a silly old woman, with little or
no wisdom and wit--"

"Not silly and not old, carissima!" interrupted Drusus, smiling at her
self-depreciation.

"We won't argue," said Fabia, in a bit lighter vein. "But--as I would
say--I believe in gods, and that they order all things well."

"Why, then," protested the young man, "do we suffer wrong or grief? If
gods there are, they are indifferent; or, far worse, malevolent, who
love to work us woe."

Again Fabia shook her head.

"If we were gods," said she, "we would all be wise, and could see the
good to come out of every seeming evil. There! I am, as I said, silly
and old, and little enough comfort can words of mine bring a bright
young man whose head is crammed with all the learned lore of the
schools of Athens. But know this, Quintus, so long as I live, you
shall live in my heart--living or dead though you be. And believe me,
the pleasure of life is but a very little thing; it is sweet, but how
quickly it passes! And the curses or praises of men--these, too, only
a few mouldy rolls of books keep for decay! What profits it to
Miltiades this hour, that a few marks on a papyrus sheet ascribe to
him renown; or how much is the joy of Sextus Tarquinius darkened
because a group of other marks cast reproa