The youth could find no explanation for these things.
One day--about a week after Lucius Rutilius’s departure--he was walking through the avenues of the Campus Martius. Caius had long neglected this afternoon exercise of several hours before dinner; now, when his head was burning from the constant restlessness of his excited thoughts, he had resumed the old custom, and to-day, for the fourth time, set out on his usual walk to the so-called Septae, the place where the ancient assemblies of the people were held, past the spreading boughs of the double row of maples, whose rustling foliage already began to assume the brilliant hues of autumn.
Spite of the lateness of the season the air was as soft and mild as that of spring. A brilliant throng filled the carriage-roads and bridle-paths. Aristocratic dames were borne in magnificent litters through the laurel and myrtle groves, followed by a train of gaily-attired cavaliers--for the white toga of ancient Rome had long since ceased to be the exclusive costume of these fashionable gallants. Rich manufacturers from Alexandria rolled in the two-wheeled cisium, preceded by woolly-haired runners in bright red garments, side by side with the magnificent carriage of the senator who prided himself on his noble blood and the glittering pony chaise of the woman of the demi monde with her towering coiffure--the “Libertina,” of whom Ovid has sung. Wrestling and throwing the discus were practised on the stretches of turf; but the combatants merely played clever tricks on each other--compared with the fierce athletes who had steeled their muscles here under Tiberius and Caligula--and the discus had grown smaller, as if intended for boys, a symbol of the increasing degeneracy which was finally to succumb to the mighty assault of the victorious German tribes.
Caius Bononius walked through this splendid labyrinth like a somnambulist. Even here, amid the merry, frivolous population of the world’s capital, he could not shake off the burden weighing upon his heart and brain. On the evening he met Rutilius he had been on his way to detect the vanity of Olbasanus’ arts--and the consequence was that he found himself more than ever ensnared in the net of uncertainty. There was a touch of the tragi comical in this condition of affairs. Bononius, as he paced to and fro, had the vague feeling that he was playing a somewhat pitiful part before himself and the aristocratic company assembled under the maples....