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If things go on this way there will be no Roman nobility nor gentry nor even any Roman commonality; just a wish-wash of counterfeit Romans, nine-tenths foreign in ancestry, with just enough of a dash of Roman blood to bequeath them our weaknesses and vices." "On the other hand," said Juventius Muso, "while agreeing with Naepor as to the propriety of the tone, I object to the question.
"Bultius," he said, "Vulso and Naepor and I have listened without any interruptions to your version of the occurrences you have narrated, and I must say you have told them as fairly as could be expected from any one with your leanings. I have no remarks to make on your story nor anything to say in rebuttal.
"I," said Naepor, "have watched him catch a butterfly and, holding it uncrushed, walk into a wood, and have seen a woodthrush flutter down to him, take the butterfly from his fingers, speed away with it to feed its young and presently return to his empty hand, as if expecting another insect, perch on his hand, peck at it and remain some time; and there is no song-bird more fearful of mankind, more aloof, more retiring, more secret than a wood-thrush."
"I have lent it," I explained, "to Marcus Martius, to travel to Rome in with his bride. I wrote you of his wedding. He has just married my uncle's freedwoman Marcia. I wrote you about it." "Pooh!" cried Tanno, "how should I remember the marriage of a freedwoman I never saw with a bumpkin I never heard of?" "No bumpkin," cut in Lisius Naepor.
To this Rusco and Naepor agreed, with less hesitancy. Similarly the three Satronians expressed their concurrence. Again they all congratulated me on my luck, drank to the success of my suit, and to my prosperity and health. Complete harmony reigned and the strained social atmosphere attending a dinner in the feud area vanished completely.
"I should never have known of Hedulio's horoscope if his uncle had not shown me a copy. Caius has never mentioned it, unless one of us talked of it first." "What's the point of the horoscope?" Tanno queried. "Why you see," Naepor explained. "Hedulio was born in the third watch of the night on the Ides of September.
He would have been here to-night but for his recent marriage and approaching journey to Rome. I have always asked him to my dinners." "Then how, in the name of Ops Consiva," cried Tanno, "did he come to marry your uncle's freedwoman?" "This time I agree with you, Opsitius," said Naepor. "Your tone of scorn is wholly justified. Marrying freedwomen is getting far too common.
"But," he cried, "if you do such wonders, how do you do them, Caius?" "I don't know now," I said, "any more than I knew the first time I gentled a fierce strange dog. It came natural then, it always has come natural." "Naturally," said Lisius Naepor, "since it is part of your nature from before birth. Do you mean to tell us, Opsitius, that Hedulio has never shown you his horoscope?"
"I think you are right," said Lisius Naepor, "for Hedulio's ability to approach a doe with fawns and to handle the young in sight of the mother without her showing any sign of alarm or concern, is, to my mind, quite as marvellous as his dealings with the she-bear. It seems to me as miraculous to overcome the timidity of the doe as the ferocity of the bear.
"Never!" said Tanno, "and he never spoke of it to me. I'm Spanish, you know, by ancestry, and Spaniards are not Syrians or Egyptians. Horoscopes don't figure largely in Spanish life. I never bothered about horoscopes, I suppose. So I never mentioned horoscopes to Hedulio nor he to me." "Nor he to you of course," said Neponius Pomplio, "he is too modest." "In fact," said Naepor.
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