kept its fictions of tutelage.  Honourable marriages were growing fewer and fewer.  Divorces were multiplying.  The morality of the time can be judged from the fact that the “immaculate” Marcus Cato separated from his wife that a friend might marry her; and when the friend died, married her himself again.  Scandals and love intrigues were common in the highest circles; noble ladies, and not ballet-dancers[86] merely, thought it of little account to have their names besmirched.  Everything in society was splendid, polished, decorous, cultivated without; but within, hollow and rotten.

  [86] Mimae.

Cornelia grew weary and sick of the excitement, the fashionable chatter, the mongering of low gossips.  She loathed the sight of the effeminate young fops who tried to win her smiles by presenting themselves for a polite call each morning, polished and furbelowed, and rubbed sleek and smooth with Catanian pumice.  Her mother disgusted her so utterly that she began to entertain the most unfilial feeling toward the worthy woman.  Cornelia would not or could not understand that in such hot weather it was proper to wear lighter rings than in winter, and that each ring must be set carefully on a different finger joint to prevent touching.  Cornelia watched her servants, and reached the astonishing conclusion that these humble creatures were really extracting more pleasure out of life than herself.  Cassandra had recovered from her whipping, and was bustling about her tasks as if nothing had happened.  Agias seemed to have a never failing fund of good spirits.  He was always ready to tell the funniest stories or retail the latest news.  Once or twice he brought his mistress unspeakable delight, by smuggling into the house letters from Drusus, which contained words of love and hope, if no really substantial promises for the future.  But this was poor enough comfort.  Drusus wrote that he could not for the time see that any good end would be served by coming to Rome, and he would remain for the present in Praeneste.  He and she must try to wait in patience, until politics took such a turn as would drive Lentulus into a more tractable attitude.  Cornelia found the days monotonous and dreary.  Her uncle’s freedman kept her under constant espionage to prevent a chance meeting with Drusus, and but for Agias she would have been little better than a prisoner, ever in charge of his keepers.

In a way, however, Cornelia found that there was enough stirring in the outside world to lend zest and often venom to the average emptiness of polite conversation.  Politics were penetrating deeper and deeper into fashionable society.  Cornelia heard how Paulus, the consul, had taken a large present from Caesar to preserve neutrality; and how Curio, the tribune, had checked Clodius Marcellus, the other consul, when he wished to take steps in the Senate against Caesar.  All that Cornelia heard of that absent statesman was from hostile lips; consequently she had him painted to her as blood-thirsty, treacherous, of flagrant immorality, with his one object to gather a band of kindred spirits to his cause, and become despot.  And to hear such reports and yet to keep confident that Drusus was not sacrificing both himself and her in a worse than unworthy cause—­this tested her to the uttermost.