'Fausta, I am in earnest in what I have said. It is my own native
dialect--instinctive. Therefore laugh not, but give me a lesson how I
shall deport myself. Remember the lessons I have so many times given you
in Rome, and now that you have risen into the seat of power, return them
as you are bound to do.'

'Now are you both little more than two foolish children, but just escaped
from the nursery,' cried Gracchus, who had been pacing up and down the
portico, little heeding, to all appearance, what was going on. 'Lucius,
ask no advice of that wild school-girl. Listen to me, who am a counsellor,
and of age, and ought, if I do not, to speak the words of wisdom. Take
along with thee nothing but thy common sense, and an honest purpose, and
then Venus herself would not daunt thee, nor Rhadamanthus and the Furies
terrify. Forget not too, that beneath this exterior covering, first of
clothes, and then of flesh, there lies enshrined in the breast of Zenobia,
as of you and me, a human heart, and that this is ever and in all the
same, eternally responsive to the same notes, by whomsoever struck. This
is a great secret. Believe too, that in our good Queen this heart is pure
as a child's; or, if I may use another similitude, and you can understand
it, pure as a Christian's--rather, perhaps, as a Christian's ought to be.
Take this also, that the high tremble to meet the low, as often as the low
to meet the high. Now ask no more counsel of Fausta, but digest what the
oracle has given out, and which now for the night is silent,'

In this sportive mood we separated.

At the appointed hour on the following day, the expected messenger
appeared, and announcing the Queen's pleasure that I should attend her at
the palace, conducted me there with as much of state as if I had been
Aurelian's ambassador.