Allinson, Anne C. E. . Roads from Rome
Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library

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III

   Marcus had been in his pasture for many an hour when Calpurnia came to the farm. His mother was on her knees washing up the stone floor of the kitchen. A sweet voice sounded in her ears, and she looked up to see a goddess -- as she thought in the first blinding moment -- a goddess dressed in silvery white with a gleam of


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gold at her throat. Neither woman ever told all that passed between them in their long talk in the sunlit courtyard, where they sought solitude, but when Marcus's mother kissed her visitor's hands at parting, Calpurnia's eyes shone with tears and her own were bright as with a vision.

   When she went back into the kitchen, she found on the stone table a great hamper, from which a bottle of wine generously protruded. Her father-in-law from his chair in the window began an excited and incoherent story. She ran to him and knelt by his side and begged him to understand while she told him of a miracle. The dull old eyes looked only troubled. So she choked back her tears and stroked his hands gently and said over and over, until his face brightened, "You are never going to be cold or hungry again -- never cold or hungry."

   Even with her many tasks the summer day seemed unending to her. Finally, as the shadows lengthened, she could no longer endure to wait and started out to meet Marcus. Across a green meadow she saw him coming, walking soberly


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and wearily in front of his herded flock. As he saw her, his listlessness fell from him and he ran forward anxiously. But when he reached her and saw her eyes, his heart almost stopped beating in glad amazement. And she held out her hands, while the dog jumped up on them both in an ecstasy, and said to him, "My son, Fors Fortuna, your Lady of the Spring, has blessed us. You are to go to school."

   Later in the evening, when the wonderful supper from the hamper had been eaten and cleared away, and the grandfather had fallen peacefully asleep, and the sheep and goats and hens had been tended for the night, Marcus and his mother sat in the doorway beside the red rosebush and dreamed dreams together of a time when house and courtyard, renewed, should once more exercise a happy sovereignty over fruitful acres. The world seemed Marcus's because he was to go to school, this very year, in their own Como. They had not known before that Pliny had offered to share with the citizens the expense of a school of their own, so that boys need not go as far as Milan. Marcus was awed


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into speechlessness 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


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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."



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A ROAD TO ROME



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