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Calpurnia's interview with Claudius at Ostia. Claudius is exceedingly terrified. The statement of Narcissus. Council called. Measures adopted by Claudius and the conspirators. Messalina receives warning. Scene in the garden. Silius withdraws. Messalina's anxiety. Messalina's course of action. Her two children. She proceeds to meet the emperor. Her entreaties. Claudius will not hear her.
Cleopatra must have been Calpurnia's guest as well as her husband's; and her presence, however commented upon in society, could not possibly have borne the avowed complexion which tradition assigned to it.
And will the Como boys become sparkling little Plinies? "I must see the grown-up Pliny's noble brow and my Calpurnia's eyes and the Tartarean frown of Tacitus, who, I hear, is with you. Quadratus says you are at the smallest of your Como villas. The mood suits me. At Tusculum or Tibur or Praeneste or Laurentum you might have longed for me in vain.
Calpurnia's father proposed that this will should be opened and read in public at Antony's house; and this was accordingly done. The provisions of the will were, many of them, of such a character as renewed the feelings of interest and sympathy which the people of Rome had begun to cherish for Caesar's memory.
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.
But he said that meant that he would be crowned, and he went out and was killed. That is what the poem says: If Caesar listened to Calpurnia's dream He had not been by Pompey's statue slain. All great men gave attention to dreams, though the Church is against them now. It is written in Scripture that Joseph gave attention to his dream. But Colonel Merell did not, and so he went to his death.
Calpurnia's eyes filled with tears at his account of the old grandfather "ruined," she exclaimed to the others, "in the very month that Pliny's name, as we afterwards discovered, was put on the prescription list. We were so anxious at the time that must explain our never following the family up. I will go early to-morrow," she added, turning to her husband, "and see the mother.
The name of Marius is even now a popular Christian name in Provence. But to return to Calpurnia. The place where the Arles inhabitants fled from the Teutons was the limestone range of Les Alpines, almost an island, so surrounded was it by lagoons and marshes. Looking at Calpurnia's monument I fell into a dream, and saw her whole story unfolded before me.
Even Quadratilla remarked that he was a decent little clod-hopper, as she demanded a lamp by which to examine her jewel. Pliny and Calpurnia's eyes met in swift response to each other's thoughts. They examined the farmer's seal and questioned Lucius more closely.
The group under Pliny's roof was completed by Calpurnia's lovely aunt, Hispulla, and Fannia, whose famous ancestry was accentuated in her own distinguished character. Pliny's old schoolfellow, Caninus Rufus, had come to his adjacent villa, bringing with him their common friend, Voconius Romanus. These friends had entered upon one of the holiday seasons rarely granted to people of importance.
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