ted, ordered the repairing of an aqueduct, that which
served the transtiberine district, and was indispensable to the working
of the Janiculan mills, where corn was ground; but, after his
departure, there was neither enough energy nor sufficient sense of
security in Rome for the restoration of even one of the greater
conduits. Nobles and populace alike lived without the bath, grew
accustomed to more or less uncleanliness, and in a certain quarter
suffered worse than inconvenience from the lack of good water.

Formerly a young Roman of Basil's rank, occupied or not by any serious
pursuit, would have spent several hours of the day at one or other of
the Thermae still in use; if inclined to display, he would have gone
thither with a train of domestic attendants, and probably of parasites;
were the season hot, here he found coolness; were it cold, here he
warmed himself. Society never failed; opportunity for clandestine
meetings could always be found; all the business and the pleasure of a
day were regulated with reference to this immemorial habit. Now, to
enter the Thermae was to hear one's footsteps resound in a marble
wilderness; to have statues for companions and a sense of ruin for
one's solace. Basil, who thought more than the average Roman about
these changes, and who could not often amuse himself with such
spectacles as the theatres or the circus offered, grew something of a
solitary in his habits, and was supposed by those who did not know him
intimately, to pass most of his time in religious meditation, the
preface, perhaps, to retirement from the world. Indolence bringing its
wonted temptations, he fell into acquaintance with Heliodora, a
Neapolitan Greek of uncertain origin, whose husband that year held the
office of City Prefect. Acquaintance with Heliodora was, in his case,
sure to be a dangerous thing, and might well prove fatal, for many and
fierce were the jealousies excited by that brilliant lady, whose
husband alone regarded with equanimity her amorous adventures. Happily,
Basil did not take the matter very much to heart; he scarce pretended
to himself that he cared whether Heliodora was his for a day only or
for a month; and he had already turned his thoughts to the sweetness of
Aemiliana, that young sister of Gordian, whom, if he chose, he might
make his wife.

Now again had sluggishness taken possession of him, and with it came
those promptings of the flesh which, but a few months ago, he easily
subd