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Yet I formed the purpose of attempting, that very morning, to see both Satronius and Vedius, and of attempting, if I was admitted to either, to convince him that he had no reason to be incensed with me, but that he should rather be incensed against my assailants: an aim impossible of attainment, as I knew, but would not admit to myself.
He responded as at the commencement of our meal. "I have a note here," he said, "which I was enjoined not to hand you until after this fruit had been set upon your table." He handed me the missive, the superscription of which was, to my astonishment, in the handwriting of Satronius Dromo. While my fingers tugged at the thread, Tanno commanded: "Read it out loud at once, like the other.
As to Vedius and Satronius, I was vividly aware of their state of mind and acutely wretched over it.
He turned ironically to Vedius and asked: "Did you miss any part of what I have just said to Andivius? I meant you to hear every word of it." Vedius, his mean face lead-gray, bowed and said: "Your Majesty was completely audible." Then Commodus similarly questioned Satronius. He, his big face brick-red, his eyes popping out, seemed half strangled by his efforts to speak.
For if all Vedians were sure to be very decidedly hypercritical as to anyone likely to become Vedia's second husband, it was still more a certainty that the entire Satronian connection would scrutinize minutely everything concerning any man likely to come into control of the great properties which she had inherited from her husband, Satronius Patavinus.
I lay abed, my mind milling over my situation, over Vedia's unexpected jealousy of Marcia, over the absurdity of it, over her illogical but impregnable indignation and over the equally baseless but similarly unalterable hostility of Vedius and Satronius. I concluded to try again to placate all three.
I tried to keep on hoping, but, after a whole year, I stopped lying awake and sobbing in the dark; while I felt more grief for you than I ever felt for Satronius Patavinus and more truly widowed than when he died, I ceased to grieve and regained my interest in gaieties and suitors. Don't you think that was natural?" "Very natural," I admitted and went on with my story.
When I rolled into bed I had felt so utterly done up with the excitement of my interviews with Vedius and Satronius, with the exertion of standing in the Throne-room and through the Emperor's lecture on chariot design, that I had renounced my intention of calling on Vedia and had resigned myself to postponing my attempt to see her until the morrow.
He mowed and gibbered at us and then spoke some intelligible words, as he occasionally did. "I know you, Hedulio," he called. "You can't hide yourself under that hat nor inside that raincloak. I know you, Hedulio. But nobody but an idiot would ever recognize you inside that rig and with all this escort. I know you, you aren't Vedius Vindex, you aren't Satronius Sabinus. You're Andivius Hedulio.
"Not any more of a bumpkin than I or any of the rest of us here. You are too high and mighty, Opsitius. It is true that in our countryside the only senators are Aemilius, Vedius and Satronius, and that in our immediate vicinity Hirnio and Hedulio are the only proprietors of equestrian rank but we commoners here are no bumpkins or clodhoppers." "I apologize," Tanno spoke conciliatingly.
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