ars of Marcus alone can
furnish. As the only way in which to keep the good opinion of Lucilia
is to eat, I ate of all that was on the table, she assuring me that
everything was from their own grounds--the butter made by her own
hands--and that I might search Rome in vain for better. This I readily
admitted. Indeed no butter is like hers--so yellow and so hard--nor
bread so light, and so white. Even her honey is more delicious than what
I find elsewhere, the bees knowing by instinct who they are working for;
and the poultry is fatter and tenderer, the hens being careful never to
over-fatigue themselves, and the peacocks and the geese not to exhaust
themselves in screaming and cackling. All nature, alive and dead, takes
upon itself a trimmer and more perfect seeming within her influences.

I had sat thus gossipping with Lucilia, enjoying the balmy breezes of a
warm autumn day, as they drew through the great hall of the house, when,
preceded by the bounding Gallus, the master of the house entered in
field dress of broad sun-hat, open neck, close coat depending to the
knees, and boots that brought home with them the spoils of many a
well-ploughed field.

'Well, sir Christian,' he cried, 'I joy to see thee, although thus
recreant. But how is it that thou lookest as ever before? Are not these
vanities of silk, and gold, and fine clothes, renounced by those of the
new religion? Your appearance says nay, and, by Jupiter! wine has been
drunk already! Nay, nay, Lucilia, it was hardly a pagan act to tempt our
strict friend with that Falernian.'

'Falernian is it?'

'Yes, of the vintage of the fourth of Gallienus. Delicious, was it not?
But by and by thou shalt taste something better than that--as much
better as that is than anything of the same name thou didst ever raise
to thy lips at the table of Aurelian. Piso! never was a face more
welcome! Not a soul has looked in upon us for days and days. Not,
Lucilia, since the Kalends, when young Flaccus, with a boat-load of
roysterers, dropt down the river. But why comes not Julia too? She could
not leave the games and theatres, hah?'

'Marcus,' said Lucilia, 'you forget it was the princess who first
seduced Lucius. But for that eastern voyage for the Persian Calpurnius,
Piso would have been still, I dare say, what his parents made him. Let
us not yet however stir this topic; but first of all, Lucius, give us
the city news. How went the dedication? we have heard strange tales.'

'