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Updated: June 22, 2025
I recognized the back of Flavius Clemens! If he turned round I felt I was lost. Yet I could not flee. Falco was certain to linger in the shop. I must keep my self-control and prepare to brazen out anything. The next instant I recognized the back of the lady next Flavius Clemens. Vedia! As I recognized her she turned, saw me, knew me through my disguise, flushed, and turned back.
Strangely enough, when, at Baiae, I read letters from Falco, Tanno and Agathemer describing the devastation, my mind dwelt more on the annihilation of the shop where I had encountered Vedia than on the destruction of the Palace records and most of the public records, or of the many revered temples which had vanished in the flames.
As I began to move my mind was free enough to wonder how Vedia had found time to change from her slave-girl disguise into a bewitching fashionable toilet. Among those leaders of Roman society, the very pick of Rome's noblewomen, she showed her best and outshone them all.
A change of name would make it impossible for Tanno and Vedia to carry out her plan for my manumission by the fiscus, my clandestine journey to Bruttium and my comfortable and unsuspected seclusion there until some other prince succeeded our present Emperor. I had grasped eagerly at the thought of this plan and had built much on it.
I became almost gay, I was enjoying myself. The enjoyment, toward the close of the banquet, was marred by Bambilio, who, inevitably, had told Falco of his capture by brigands on the Flaminian Highway and, after his tale was told at great length, insisted on Vedia telling hers. He could wrestle with leopards; perhaps even his ghost might be able to control wild beasts."
Vedia petted me and I petted her and she repeated her vows of unalterable fidelity to her pledge to marry no one else and to hope to marry me. As dawn brightened the hyenas burst into a belated chorus and a lion roared far away. After that the beasts made no sounds which came to our ears. Vedia insisted on my eating more of her delicacies and, I confess, I ate liberally and with relish.
From there, after no long wait, I was haled off to the slaves' prison in the Slave-Dealers' Exchange next the Slave-Market. There I was released from my bonds, heavy shackles were riveted on my ankles and I was cast into the lower dungeon. I had had time to tell Dromo, my faithful valet, to inform Agathemer. I knew he, in turn, would inform Tanno and Vedia.
The fights, as Tanno explained to you, had nothing to do with Marcia and her involvement in them was as accidental as mine." Vedia did not look a particle mollified. "You men," she said, "are all alike. You will philander about your nasty jades.
Suddenly, on this diving-stand, poised for her dive, outlined against the window behind her, I recognized Vedia; Vedia, my angered sweetheart, rosy as Marcia, more lovely, and nude as Venus rising from the sea. Seeing her thus, and seeing her thus unexpectedly, woke in me a volcanic outburst of conflicting emotions altogether too much for my weakened condition. I fainted.
I was even more acutely aware of the keen intuition which every lover feels toward any actual or potential rival. I dreaded that Clemens not only recognized me for myself, but had a glimmering inkling as to why his suit of Vedia had twice failed. But he said nothing except: "You are cleared of every imputation in connection with the murder of Pompeianus Falco. You are free to go where you please."
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