ss when his mother told him that
the great man was personally to see to his registration and fees and
clothes and books. The evening wore on, and the boy's head, heavy
with visions, fell sleepily against his mother's breast. As she held
him to her, her thoughts wandered from him to the radiant lady who
had brought such light into their darkness. Could Fors Fortuna
herself, she wondered, be any happier, laden with beauty and riches
and power, and making of them a saving gift for mortals?

At the villa dinner had passed off successfully, Quadratilla having
been entertaining oftener than outrageous and the others having been
in a compliant mood because she was to leave the next day. After
dinner, in the cool atrium, Calpurnia had sung some of her husband's
verses, which she had herself charmingly adapted to the lyre. Later
Quadratilla challenged the younger people to the dice, while
Hispulla retired to the library. Calpurnia slipped into the garden.
There Pliny, never contented when she was out of his sight, found
her leaning against a marble balustrade among the ghostly flowerbeds,
where in the night deep pink azaleas and crimson and amber roses
became one with tall white lilies. Nightingales were singing and the
darkness was sparkling with fireflies. Her fragile face shone out
upon him like a flower. If about Pliny the public official there was
anything a little amusing, a little pompous, it was not to be found
in Pliny the married lover. Immemorial tendernesses were in his voice
as he spoke to his wife: "My sweet, what are you thinking of,
withdrawn so far from me?" Calpurnia smiled bravely into his face,
as she answered: "Of the mothers who have little sons to send to
school."

A ROAD TO ROME

An ardour not of Eros' lips.--WILLIAM WATSON.

I

The spring had come promptly this year and with it the usual invoice
of young Romans to Athens. Some of them were planning to stay only
a month or two to see the country and hear the more famous professors
lecture. Others were settling down for a long period of serious study
in rhetoric and philosophy. Scarcely to be classed among any of these
was the young poet Julius Paulus,[2] who, as he put it to himself
with the frank grandiosity of youth, was in search of the flame of
life--_studiosus ardoris vivendi_. He had brought a letter to Aulus
Gellius, and Gellius, dutifully responsive to all social claims,
invited him on a day in early March to join him and a few fr