recovered from her whipping, and was bustling about her tasks as if
nothing had happened. Agias seemed to have a never failing fund of
good spirits. He was always ready to tell the funniest stories or
retail the latest news. Once or twice he brought his mistress
unspeakable delight, by smuggling into the house letters from Drusus,
which contained words of love and hope, if no really substantial
promises for the future. But this was poor enough comfort. Drusus
wrote that he could not for the time see that any good end would be
served by coming to Rome, and he would remain for the present in
Præneste. He and she must try to wait in patience, until politics took
such a turn as would drive Lentulus into a more tractable attitude.
Cornelia found the days monotonous and dreary. Her uncle's freedman
kept her under constant espionage to prevent a chance meeting with
Drusus, and but for Agias she would have been little better than a
prisoner, ever in charge of his keepers.

In a way, however, Cornelia found that there was enough stirring in
the outside world to lend zest and often venom to the average
emptiness of polite conversation. Politics were penetrating deeper and
deeper into fashionable society. Cornelia heard how Paulus, the
consul, had taken a large present from Cæsar to preserve neutrality;
and how Curio, the tribune, had checked Clodius Marcellus, the other
consul, when he wished to take steps in the Senate against Cæsar. All
that Cornelia heard of that absent statesman was from hostile lips;
consequently she had him painted to her as blood-thirsty, treacherous,
of flagrant immorality, with his one object to gather a band of
kindred spirits to his cause, and become despot. And to hear such
reports and yet to keep confident that Drusus was not sacrificing both
himself and her in a worse than unworthy cause--this tested her to the
uttermost.