The servants, stimulated to their duties by Rufus, brought in food.  Fabia made Ovid eat some bread and fruit.  The evening wore on.  The December moon was mounting the sky.  Voices and footsteps of passers-by were vaguely heard.  In the distance a dog barked incessantly.  Lights were lit, but the usual decorum of the house was broken.  The fire died dully upon the hearth.  The children were brought into the room, looking pale and worn with the unwonted hour.  Midnight came and went.  All sounds of the city died away.  Even the dog ceased his howling.  They were alone with disaster.  Ovid went to the window and drew aside the heavy curtain.  The moon rode high over the Capitol.  Suddenly he stretched out his arms and they heard him praying to the great gods of his country.  In this moment Fabia’s self-control, like a dam too long under pressure, gave way.  Except on ceremonial occasions she had never heard her husband pray.  Now, he who had had the heart of a child for Rome and for her was cast out by Rome and was beyond her help.  From her breast he must turn to the indifferent gods in heaven.  She broke into hard, terrible sobs and threw herself down before the hearth, kissing the grey ashes.  Unregardful of those about her, she prayed wildly to the lesser gods of home, her gods.  From the temple on the Capitoline, from the Penates came no answer.

His friends began to urge Ovid to start.  His carriage was ready, he must run no risk of not clearing Rome by daylight.  Why should he go, he asked with a flicker of his old vivacity, when to go meant leaving Rome and turning toward Scythia?  He called the children to him and talked low to them of their mother.  Again his friends urged him.  Three times he started for the door and three times he came back.  At the end Fabia clung to him and beat upon his shoulders and declared she must go with him.  What was Augustus’s command to her?  Love was her Caesar.  Rufus came and drew her away.  The door opened.  The cold night air swept the atrium.  She caught sight of Ovid’s face, haggard and white against the black mass of his dishevelled hair.  His shoulders sagged.  He stumbled as he went out.  She was conscious of falling, and knew nothing more.

III

Ovid’s second birthday in exile had passed.  The hope of an early release, harboured at first by his family and friends, had died away.  None of them knew what the “blunder” or “crime” was which had aroused the anger of Augustus, and every effort to bring into high relief the innocence of Ovid’s personal life and his loyalty to the imperial family simply made them more cognisant of a mystery they could not fathom.  Access to Caesar was easy to some of them, and through Marcia, Maximus’s wife, they had hoped to reach Livia.  But these high personages remained inscrutable and relentless.  At times it seemed as if even Tiberius, although long absent from the city, might be playing a sinister