exhaustion, and spoke of the sons of citizens and peasants who had been
dragged from their villages, their parents, and their business to be
trained for seamen. There was great indignation among them, and they
listened only too readily to the agitators who whispered how much better
they would have fared on the galleys of Octavianus.

Pyrrhus entreated his sons not to join any attempt at mutiny; the women,
on the contrary, would have approved anything which promised to release
the youths from their severe service, and their bright cheerfulness was
transformed into anxious depression. Barine, too, was no longer the
same. She had lost her joyous activity, her eyes were often wet with
tears, and she moved with drooping head as if some heavy care oppressed
her.

Was it the heat of April, with its desert winds, which had brought the
transformation? Had longing for the changeful, exciting life of former
days at last overpowered her? Was solitude becoming unendurable? Was
her husband's love no longer sufficient to replace the many pleasures she
had sacrificed?--No! It could not be that; never had she gazed with more
devoted tenderness into Dion's face than when entirely alone with him in
shady nooks. She who in such hours looked the very embodiment of
happiness and contentment, certainly was neither ill nor sorrowful.

Dion, on the contrary, held his head high early and late, and appeared as
proud and self-conscious as though life was showing him its fairest face.
Yet he had heard that his estates had been sequestrated, and that he owed
it solely to the influence of Archibius and his uncle, that his property,
like that of so many others, had not been added to the royal treasures.
But what disaster could he not have speedily vanquished in these days?