Lentulus wandered through the mazes of courts, colonnades, and the magnificently decorated and finished rooms of the villa, until he came to the chamber of Claudia, his sister-in-law.  Claudia was a woman of the same fashionable type as Valeria, good-looking, ostentatious, proud, selfish, devoid of any aim in life save the securing of the most vapid pleasure.  At the moment, she was stretched out on a thickly cushioned couch.  She had thrown on a loose dress of silken texture.  A negress was waving over her head a huge fan of long white feathers.  A second negress was busy mixing in an Authepsa,—­a sort of silver urn, heated by charcoal,—­a quantity of spices, herbs, and water, which the lady was to take as soon as it was sufficiently steeped.  Claudia had been enjoying an unusually gay round of excitement while at Baiae, and she had but just come up to Praeneste, to recover herself after the exertions of a score of fashionable suppers, excursions on the Lucrine Lake, and the attendant exhausting amusements.  When her brother-in-law entered the room, she raised her carefully tinted eyebrows, and observed with great languor:—­

“So you have gotten away from Rome, at last, my Lucius?”

“For a few days,” replied Lentulus, in no very affable tone; “the heat and din of the city will drive me mad!  And I have had no end of troublesome business.  The senators are all fools or slaves of Caesar.  That treacherous rascal, Curio, is blocking all our efforts.  Even Pompeius is half-hearted in the cause.  It wouldn’t take much to make him go back to Caesar, and then where would we be?”

“Where would we be?” said Claudia, half conscious of what she said, turning over wearily.  “Don’t talk politics, my dear brother.  They are distressingly dull.  My head aches at the very word.”  And she held out her hand and took the golden cup of hot drink which the negress offered her.

“Aye,” replied Lentulus, not in the least subdued, “where will we be, if Pompeius and Caesar become friends?  If there is no war, no proscription, no chance to make a sesterce in a hurry!”

“My dear brother,” said Claudia, still more languidly, and yawning at length, as she handed back the cup, “have I not said that the mere mention of politics makes my head ache?”

“Then let it,” said the other, brutally; “I must have some plain words with you.”  And he pointed toward the door.  The two serving-maids took the hint, and retired.

Claudia settled her head back on the pillows, and folded her hands as if to resign herself to a very dull tete-a-tete.

“Have you any new debts?” demanded Lentulus.

“What a tiresome question,” murmured the lady.  “No—­no—­yes; I owe Pomponius the fancier—­I don’t quite know how much—­for my last Maltese lap dog.”

“Thank the gods that is all,” went on her brother-in-law.  “Now listen to me.  I have been living beyond my means.  Last year the canvass to get on the board of guardians of the Sibylline Books—­in which that graceless son-in-law of Cicero’s, Publius Dolabella, defeated me—­cost a deal of money.  This year I have the consulship.  But it has taken every denarius I own, and more too.  All my estates are involved, so that it will require years to redeem them, in the ordinary way.”