could see white-faced Nereids dance and beckon, and of how she bore
within her hold many heroes dedicated to a great quest. It was the
first time Catullus had heard the magic tale of the Golden Fleece
and in his mother's harp-like voice it had brought him his first
desire for strange lands and the wide, grey spaces of distant seas.
Then he had felt his mother's arm tighten around him and something
in her voice made his throat ache, as she went on to tell them of
the sorceress Medea; how she brought the leader of the quest into
wicked ways, so that the glory of his heroism counted for nothing
and misery pursued him, and how she still lived on in one disguise
after another, working ruin, when unresisted, by poisoned sheen or
honeyed draught. Catullus began to feel very much frightened, and
then all at once his mother jumped up and called out excitedly, "Oh,
see, a Nereid, a Nereid!" And they had all three rushed wildly down
the beach to the foamy edge of the lake, and there she danced with
them, her blue eyes laughing like the waves and her loosened hair
shining like the red-gold clouds around the setting sun. They had
danced until the sun slipped below the clouds and out of sight, and
a servant had come with cloaks and a reminder of the dinner hour.

Now from the hill above Verona Catullus could see the red gold of
another sunset and he was alone. Valerius, who had known him with
that Nereid-mother, had gone forever. Because they had lain upon the
same mother's breast and danced with her upon the Sirmian shore,
Catullus had always known that his older brother's sober life was
the fruit of a wine-red passion for Rome's glory. And Valerius's
knowledge of him--ah, how penetrating that had been!

Across the plain below him stretched the road to Mantua. Was it only
last April that upon this road he and Valerius had had that revealing