ventured to
beg relief from the fulfilment of a command, who said "I will not and
I cannot," was something so unheard-of in Rome that Petronius could not
believe his own ears at first. Finally he frowned. He was too refined
to be cruel. His slaves, especially in the department of pleasure,
were freer than others, on condition of performing their service in an
exemplary manner, and honoring the will of their master, like that of a
god. In case they failed in these two respects, he was able not to spare
punishment, to which, according to general custom, they were subject.
Since, besides this, he could not endure opposition, nor anything which
ruffled his calmness, he looked for a while at the kneeling girl, and
then said,--"Call Tiresias, and return with him."

Eunice rose, trembling, with tears in her eyes, and went out; after a
time she returned with the chief of the atrium, Tiresias, a Cretan.

"Thou wilt take Eunice," said Petronius, "and give her five-and-twenty
lashes, in such fashion, however, as not to harm her skin."

When he had said this, he passed into the library, and, sitting down
at a table of rose-colored marble, began to work on his "Feast of
Trimalchion." But the flight of Lygia and the illness of the infant
Augusta had disturbed his mind so much that he could not work long. That
illness, above all, was important. It occurred to Petronius that
were Caesar to believe that Lygia had cast spells on the infant, the
responsibility might fall on him also, for the girl had been brought
at his request to the palace. But he could reckon on this, that at the
first interview with Caesar he would be able in some way to show the
utter absurdity of such an idea; he counted a little, too, on a certain
weakness which Poppaea had for him,--a weakness hidden carefully, it is
true, but not so carefully that he could not divine it. After a while
he shrugged his shoulders at these fears, and decided to go to the
triclinium to strengthen himself, and then order the litter to bear him
once more to the palace, after that to the Campus Martius, and then to
Chrysothemis.

But on the way to the triclinium at the entrance to the corridor
assigned to servants, he saw unexpectedly the slender form of Eunice
standing, among other slaves, at the wall; and forgetting that he had
given Tiresias no order beyond flogging her, he wrinkled his brow again,
and looked around for the atriensis. Not seeing him among the servants,
he turned t