changed, renewed, and
beautified, that he scarcely recognised it.

His astonishment at the transformation of the whole place tended to
increase his superstitious fears. His mouth opened wide, he let the
reins fall, stood stock-still, and he was beginning another wonderful
speech, intermixed with heathen and Christian interjections, when
Camilla, equally astounded, called out:

"But that is the garden where we once lived, the Viridarium of Honorius
at Ravenna! The same trees, the same flower-beds, and, by the lake, the
little Temple of Venus, just as it once stood on the sea-shore at
Ravenna! Oh, how beautiful! What a faithful memory! Corbulo, how did
you manage it?" and tears of grateful emotion filled her eyes.

"The devil and all the Lemures take me, if I had anything to do with
it! But there comes Cappadox with his club foot; he at least is not
bewitched. Speak, then, Cyclops, what has happened here?"

Cappadox, a gigantic, broad-shouldered slave, came limping along with
an uncouth smile, and after many questions, told a puzzling tale.

About three weeks ago, a few days after he had been sent to the estate
to manage it for his master, who had gone to the marble quarries of
Luna, there came from Tifernum a noble Roman with a troop of slaves and
workmen and heavily-packed wagons. He inquired if this was the estate
bought by the sculptor Corbulo of Perusia for the widow of Boethius.
Upon being answered in the affirmative, he had introduced himself as
the Hortulanus Princeps, that is, the superior intendant of the gardens
at Ravenna. An old friend of Boethius--who wished not to tell his name,
for fear of the Gothic tyrants--desired to care for his family in
secret, and had given orders that their summer residence should be
improved and embellished with all possible art. He (Cappadox) was by no
means to spoil the intended surprise, and, half-kindly, half by force,
they had kept him fast in the villa. Then the intendant had immediately
made his plan, and set his men to work. Many neighbouring fields were
bought at a high price; and there began such a pulling-down and
building-up, such a planting and digging, hammering and knocking, such
a cleaning and painting, that it had made him both blind and deaf. When
he ventured to meddle or ask questions the workmen laughed in his face.

"And," concluded Cappadox, "it went on in this way till the day before
yesterday. Then they had finished, and went away. At first I was
afr