United States or Isle of Man ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
When I had told him what had happened, omitting only Vedia's disguise and her presence in the water-garden, he said: "I certainly should not have prescribed any such excitements and efforts as medicaments for a case like yours. But it sometimes happens that being startled accomplishes more towards a cure than long rest can. Your perturbation of mind and activity of body has cured you.
M. Forgues is of course General Vedia's guest for the night. As he is about to dismiss the soldier who has conducted him to his chamber, which is on the ground-floor of the house, an unexpected visitor glides into the room through the open door. This visitor is a snake three feet long.
Plainly both Nemestronia and Vedia liked him, esteemed him and respected him. After we left, I felt positively exhilarated at having had an evening in Vedia's company and having talked with her. Her escort, fortunately for me, had not been Flavius Clemens but young Duillius Silanus, son of the consul, who had never met me before.
When I caught sight of it, it was near enough for me to recognize it at first view. Vedia's travelling coach! Between the first and second beat of my thumping heart, I went through an amazing variety of complex, shifting and lucid thinking.
Oddly enough, from the moment when I received Vedia's letter of warning until I caught sight of the head of the procession about to enter the Circus through the Procession gate, I had had not one instant of despondency or of self-pity.
"I must remain, here many days yet to get rid of the most pressing matters on my crowded files of official papers." After the Palace levee was over I went to Vedia's mansion and tried to see her, but was rebuffed, the porter declaring that, by her physician's orders, she was denying herself to all visitors.
I woke all feverish energy and restless determination to go to see her at once. Therefore, between the siesta hour and the hour of the bath, I presented myself at Vedia's mansion. I was at once ushered into her atrium, where I found myself alone and where I sat waiting some time.
I gathered myself together, determined to take as much advantage as possible of Vedia's warning, and of the respite it afforded me. I resolved to follow her suggestions. I had set out for the Palace unusually early. I had plenty of time. I ordered my bearers to carry me through the heart of the City down the whole length of the Vicus Tuscus to the meat market.
I was hot and cold with horror at the thought of Vedia's agony, terror and misery and of her danger among Bulla's swarthy, brutal ruffians with their black curly hair and beards intensifying the villainy of their lowering faces, with their mighty hands always close to their daggers. Vedia I must save! How?
I realized that my head was in Vedia's lap, for I saw above me her dripping breasts and, higher, her anxious face looking down at mine. I fainted again. Just how long I was entirely unconscious I do not know. For after I began to come to myself at intervals which grew shorter, for periods which grew longer, I was too weak to move a muscle or to utter a syllable.
Word Of The Day