"Your military service should have taught you more respect for your
seniors, as well as how to eat and drink temperately," said Pertinax.
"Will you teach your grandmother to suck eggs? I was the first
grammarian in Rome before you were born and a tribune before you felt
down on your cheek. I am the governor of Rome, my boy. Who are you,
that you should lecture me?"

"If you call that a lecture, concede that I dared," Sextus answered. "I
did not flatter you by coming here, or come to flatter you. I came
because my father tells me you are a Roman beyond praise. I am a Roman.
I believe praise is worthless unless proven to the hilt--as for
instance: I have come to bare my thoughts to you, which is a bold
compliment in these days of treachery."

"Keep your thoughts under cover," said Pertinax, glancing at the steward
and the slaves who were beginning to carry in the meal. But he was
evidently pleased, and Sextus's next words pleased him more:

"I am ready to do more than think about you, I will follow where you
lead--except into licentiousness!"

He lay on both elbows and stared at the scene with disgust. Naked girls,
against a background of the torchlit water and the green and purple
gloom of cypresses, was nothing to complain of; statuary, since it could
not move, was not as pleasing to the eye; but shrieks of idiotic
laughter and debauchery of beauty sickened him.

There came a series of sounds at the pavilion entrance, where a litter
was set down on marble pavement and a eunuch's shrill voice criticized