"I, too, am a Christian."

With a sharp outcry, Claudia, dragging her white draperies on the
ground, disappeared in her small room, opening by a long window from
the gallery bordering on the garden. She was seen no more that night.
Silently, the lawyer and his son and daughter ate their evening meal,
reclining on the triclinium in the long room tinted in Pompeian red, a
frieze three feet in width ran around the walls. Small, chubby
cherubs, or cupids doing the work of men, weaving draperies, preparing
food, chopping meat, plucking grapes and carrying them away in
miniature wheelbarrows, were faithfully portrayed in rich colors. Some
of these frescoes, tints as vivid as when they were laid on by the
artists of twenty centuries ago, remain to this day on the walls of
ancient Roman dwellings, and enable us to know how people lived in
those far-off times.

A servant, assisted by the porter, Alyrus, brought the food in on huge
trays, roast kid and vegetables, green salad fresh from the market in
the Forum Boarium, dressed with oil from the groves of Lucca and
vinegar made of sour red wine. Then came a delicious pudding, made
from honey brought from Hymetus in Greece to add luxury to the food of
the already too luxurious Romans, and fruit strawberries, dipped in
fine sugar and sprinkled with lemon.

Virgilia ate little; the main portions of the food she sent away
untouched. The salad and fruit were more to her liking. She was very
pale. The scene in the Circus, followed by the sudden confession of
her faith, had taxed her strength. This, her anxiety for her mother
and the unusual heat of the evening caused her to feel faint, so that
she excused herself and went away, climbing a narrow staircase to the