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Orestilla is a great Fortune, and in wonderful Danger of Surprizes, therefore full of Suspicions of the least indifferent thing, particularly careful of new Acquaintance, and of growing too familiar with the old. Themista, her Favourite-Woman, is every whit as careful of whom she speaks to, and what she says.
Never for me the pure chaste kiss, the seat by the happy hearth, the loving children at the knee, the proud approving smile of—Oh! ye gods! ye just gods!—a loved and loving husband!—Wife! wife!" she continued, lashing herself, as she proceeded, into fresh anger; "there is not in the gaols of Rome the slave so base as to call Lucia Orestilla wife!
Ho had intrigued with a Vestal virgin, the sister of Cicero's wife, Terentia. If Cicero is to be believed, he had made away with his own wife, that he might marry Aurelia Orestilla, a woman as wicked as she was beautiful, and he had killed his child also because Aurelia had objected to be encumbered with a step-son. But this, too, was common in high society in those days.
But it seems that even there could be found no great abundance of women who had all the necessary qualities to make them the Olympian consorts of so capricious a god. In three years he married and repudiated three and in a very strange manner, if we are to trust the ancient accounts of Caligula's loves. The first was Livia Orestilla, the wife of Caius Piso.
His wife, Aurelia Orestilla, sat beside him on a low stool, a woman of the most superb and queenly beauty—for whom it was believed that he had plunged himself into the deepest guilt—and still, although past the prime of Italian womanhood, possessing charms that might well account for the most insane passion.
Adultery and incest had become familiar excitements. Boys of ten years old had learnt the art of poisoning their fathers, and the story of Aurelia Orestilla and Catiline had been rehearsed a few years before by Sassia and Oppianicus at Larino.
Is this just toward me, wise toward yourself? Is this like Lucia Orestilla? You would preserve a traitor who deserts you, nay, scorns you in his easy triumph! You would destroy all those who love you; you would destroy yourself, to make the traitor and his minion happy! Awake! awake, my Lucia, from this soft foolish fancy! Awake, and be yourself once more!
Not my lips! not my lips! Part my hair on my brows, and kiss me on the forehead, where your lips, years ago, shed freshness, and hope that has not yet died all away. Sweet, sweet! it is pure and sweet, it allays the fierce burning of my brain. Fare you well, Paul, and remember—remember Lucia Orestilla."
It is very sad—and much of it is true." "And who is the girl, who wrote it?" "Her name is Lucia Orestilla." "Orestilla! Ye Gods! ye Gods! the shameless wife of the arch villain Catiline!" "Not so—but the wretched, ruined daughter of that abandoned woman!" "Call her not woman! By the Gods that protect purity! call her not woman! Did she not prompt the wretch to poison his own son!
"Before seducing Lucia Orestilla?" again sneered the desperate villain. "Before yielding," answered the young man, who was now growing angry, for his temper was not of the meekest, "to her irresistible seduction." "Ha! yielding—well! we will speak of that hereafter. Hath the consul seen Volero?" "He hath seen him dead; and how dead, Catiline best knoweth."
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