may be blamed on condition that to a
small criticism a great flattery be added. Our gracious Augusta, Poppaea,
understands this to perfection."

"Alas! such are the times," answered Aulus. "I lack two front teeth,
knocked out by a stone from the hand of a Briton, I speak with a hiss;
still my happiest days were passed in Britain."

"Because they were days of victory," added Vinicius.

But Petronius, alarmed lest the old general might begin a narrative of
his former wars, changed the conversation.

"See," said he, "in the neighborhood of Praeneste country people found
a dead wolf whelp with two heads; and during a storm about that
time lightning struck off an angle of the temple of Luna,--a thing
unparalleled, because of the late autumn. A certain Cotta, too, who
had told this, added, while telling it, that the priests of that temple
prophesied the fall of the city or, at least, the ruin of a great
house,--ruin to be averted only by uncommon sacrifices."

Aulus, when he had heard the narrative, expressed the opinion that such
signs should not be neglected; that the gods might be angered by an
over-measure of wickedness. In this there was nothing wonderful; and in
such an event expiatory sacrifices were perfectly in order.

"Thy house, Plautius, is not too large," answered Petronius, "though
a great man lives in it. Mine is indeed too large for such a wretched
owner, though equally small. But if it is a question of the ruin of
something as great, for example, as the domus transitoria, would it be
worth while for us to bring offerings to avert that ruin?"

Plautius did not answer that question,--a carefulness which touched even
Petronius somewhat, for, with all his inability to feel the difference
between good and evil, he had never been an informer; and it was
possible to talk with him in perfect safety. He changed the conversation
again, therefore, and began to praise Plautius's dwelling and the good
taste which reigned in the house.

"It is an ancient seat," said Plautius, "in which nothing has been
changed since I inherited it."

After the curtain was pushed aside which divided the atrium from the
tablinum, the house was open from end to end, so that through the
tablinum and the following peristyle and the hall lying beyond it which
was called the oecus, the glance extended to the garden, which seemed
from a distance like a bright image set in a dark frame. Joyous,
childlike laughter came from it to the atri