property--I remembered to have heard this worthy, with whom I
occasionally held discourse, philosophic and profound, when he and
I chanced to be alone together in the office, say that all first-
rate thieves were sober, and of well-regulated morals, their bodily
passions being kept in abeyance by their love of gain; but this
axiom could scarcely hold good with respect to these women--however
thievish they might be, they did care for something besides gain:
they cared for their husbands. If they did thieve, they merely
thieved for their husbands; and though, perhaps, some of them were
vain, they merely prized their beauty because it gave them favour
in the eyes of their husbands. Whatever the husbands were--and
Jasper had almost insinuated that the males occasionally allowed
themselves some latitude--they appeared to be as faithful to their
husbands as the ancient Roman matrons were to theirs. Roman
matrons! and, after all, might not these be in reality Roman
matrons? They called themselves Romans; might not they be the
descendants of the old Roman matrons? Might not they be of the
same blood as Lucretia? And were not many of their strange names--
Lucretia amongst the rest--handed down to them from old Rome? It
is true their language was not that of old Rome; it was not,
however, altogether different from it. After all, the ancient
Romans might be a tribe of these people, who settled down and
founded a village with the tilts of carts, which, by degrees, and
the influx of other people, became the grand city of the world. I
liked the idea of the grand city of the world owing its origin to a
people who had been in the habit of carrying their houses in their
carts. Why, after all, should not the Romans of history be a
branch of these Romans? There were several points of similarity
between them; if Roman matrons were chaste, both men and women were
thieves. Old Rome was the thief of the world; yet still there were