hour? The most devastating of all his memories swept in upon him.
Valerius had had his first furlough in two years and they had spent
a week of it together in Verona. The day before Valerius was to leave
to meet his transport at Brindisi they had repeated a favorite
excursion of their childhood to an excellent farm a little beyond
Mantua, to leave the house steward's orders for the season's honey.

What a day it had been, with the spring air which set mind and feet
astir, the ride along the rush-fringed banks of the winding Mincio
and the unworldly hours in the old farmstead! The cattle-sheds were
fragrant with the burning of cedar and of Syrian gum to keep off
snakes, and Catullus had felt more strongly than ever that in the
general redolence of homely virtues, natural activities and
scrupulous standards all the noisome life of town and city was kept
at bay. The same wooden image of Bacchus hung from a pine tree in
the vineyard, and the same weather-worn Ceres stood among the first
grain, awaiting the promise of her sheaves. Valerius had been asked
by his father's overseer to make inquiries about a yoke of oxen, and
Catullus went off to look at the bee-hives in their sheltered corner
near a wild olive tree. When he came back he found his brother seated
on a stone bench, carving an odd little satyr out of a bit of wood
and talking to a fragile looking boy about twelve years old.
Valerius's sympathetic gravity always charmed children and Catullus
was not surprised to see this boy's brown eyes lifted in eager
confidence to the older face.

"So," Valerius was saying, "you don't think we work only to live?
I believe you are right. You find the crops so beautiful that you
don't mind weeding, and I find Rome so beautiful that I don't mind
fighting." "Rome!" The boy's face quivered and his singularly sweet