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'Lucius! cried Fausta, I started, for it had been long that she had uttered not a word. 'Lucius! unless my eye grows dim and lies, which the gods grant, the Persians! look! they give way is it not so? Immortal gods, forsake not my country! 'The battle may yet turn, I said, turning my eyes where she pointed, and seeing it was so 'despair not, dear Fausta.
'Is it required? asked the Egyptian, evidently willing to linger. 'Not so indeed, answered Julia, 'but it would be gallant; the Queen, save Fausta, is alone. How can we answer it, if evil befall her? Her girth may break.
'It is a pitiful story, said Fausta, as I ended: 'for a brave man it has been a fate worse than death; but having survived the first shame, I fear me my father's thought will prove a too true one, and that long absence, and indignation at neglect, and perhaps gratitude and attachment to the prince, who seems to have protected him, will have weaned him from Rome.
When I came to myself, days afterward, the corner where her bed used to stand was empty, and I knew, without asking, that she was in Paradise. Flavia and Fausta and I got well over it, but much disfigured, as you see; and yet God is good, and has sent me as kind and loving a husband as if I had been the most beautiful person in the world.
Our good Zenobia, though no Christian, is yet in this respect the truest Christian. All within her realm, thought is free as the air that plays among these leaves. 'But is it not, said Fausta, 'a mark of imperfection in your religion, that it cannot control and bind to a perfect life its disciples? Methinks a divine religion should manifest its divinity in the superior goodness which it forms.
'Never! said Calpurnius; 'I can do neither. I have never shunned a danger and I cannot. 'Let pride and passion now, said Gracchus, 'go fast asleep. We have no occasion for them; they are out of place, dealing as we now do with stern necessities. Your life will be especially sought by Aurelian; it is a life that cannot be spared. Fausta needs you.
But just at the time that Fausta ought to have been apprenticed, the silk-trade, which, as I said before, had been going down for several years, failed altogether, and Fausta had to sell her loom for what it would bring. Then she thought that she would like to learn lace-mending: so the contessa got her a lace-cushion, and apprenticed her to a lace-mender for four years.
Whoever shall obtain the heart of Fausta, will win one of which a Caesar might be proud. But to return to our present interview and its event. No sooner had I ended my account of the state of affairs at Rome, than Gracchus expressed, in the strongest terms, his joy that we were so prosperous. 'It agrees, said he, 'with all that we have lately heard.
Much as I had been accustomed to the sight of Zenobia, performing the part of an emperor, I found it difficult to persuade myself, that when I looked upon Fausta, changing so completely her sex, it was any thing more than an illusion. Gracchus and Calpurnius now joined us, each, like Fausta, arrayed in the armor of the Queen's cavalry.
His grandfather, his mother's father, was a "volunteer"-boy, preparing to be midshipman, on the Serapis, and he knew he had heard him speak of Duval! Oh, how we all screamed! It was so like Ingham! Haliburton asked him if his grandfather was not best-man when Denis married Agnes. Fausta asked him if he would not continue the novel in the "Cornhill."
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