of brotherhood. In view of their lives this bond had seemed to
Catullus as incomprehensible as it was unbreakable. And he had often
wondered--he wondered now as he lay under the ash tree and listened
to the wind--whether it had had its origin in some urgent
determination of his mother who had brooded over them both.

She had died before he was six years old, but he had one vivid memory
of her, belonging to his fifth birthday, the beginning, indeed, of
all conscious memory. The day fell in June and could be celebrated
at Sirmio, their summer home on Lake Benacus. In the morning, holding
his silent father's hand, he had received the congratulations of the
servants, and at luncheon he had been handed about among the large
company of June guests to be kissed and toasted. But the high festival
began when all these noisy people had gone off for the siesta. Then,
according to a deep-laid plan, his mother and Valerius and he had
slipped unnoticed out of the great marble doorway and run hand in
hand down the olive-silvery hill to the shore of the lake. She had
promised to spend the whole afternoon with them. Never had he felt
so happy. The deep blue water, ruffled by a summer breeze, sparkled
with a million points of crystal light. Valerius became absorbed in
trying to launch a tiny red-sailed boat, but Catullus rushed back
to his mother, exclaiming, "Mother, mother, the waves are laughing
too!" And she had caught him in her arms and smiled into his eyes
and said: "Child, a great poet said that long ago. Are you going to
be a poet some day? Is that all my bad dreams mean?"

Then she had called Valerius and asked if they wanted a story of the
sea, and they had curled up in the hollows of her arms and she had
told them about the Argo, the first ship that ever set forth upon
the waters; of how, when her prow broke through the waves, the sailors