followed, however, except by mere presence, neither mourner could help the other.  His father’s inner life had always been inaccessible to Catullus and now in a common need it seemed more than ever impossible to penetrate beyond the outposts of his noble stoicism.  With Catullus, on the other hand, a moved or troubled mind could usually find an outlet in swift, hot words, and, in the unnatural restraint put upon him by his father’s speechlessness, his despair, like a splinter of steel, had only encysted itself more deeply.  To-day he welcomed the relief of being articulate.

The tie between his brother and himself was formed on the day of his own birth, when the two year old Valerius—­how often their old nurse had told the story!—­had been led in to see him, his little feet stumbling over each other in happy and unjealous haste.  Through the years of tutelage they had maintained an offensive and defensive alliance against father, nurses and teachers; and their playmates, even including Caelius, who was admitted into a happy triumvirate, knew that no intimacy could exact concessions from their fraternal loyalty.  Their days were spent in the same tasks and the same play, and the nights, isolating them from the rest of their little world, nurtured confidence and candour.  Memories began to gather and to torture him:  smiling memories of childish nights in connecting bedrooms, when, left by their nurse to sleep, each boy would slip down into the middle of his bed, just catching sight of the other through the open door in the dim glow of the nightlamp, and defy Morpheus with lively tongue; poignant memories of youthful nights, when elaborate apartments and separate servants had not checked the emergence into wholesome speech of vague ambitions, lusty hopes and shy emotions.  It was in one of these nights that Valerius had first hit upon his favourite nickname for his brother.  Pretty Aufilena had broken a promise and Catullus had vehemently maintained that she was less honest than a loose woman who kept her part of a bargain.  It was surprising that a conversation so trifling should recur in this hour, but he could see again before him his brother’s smiling face and hear him saying:  “My Diogenes, never let your lantern go out.  It will light your own feet even if you never find a truthful woman.”

All this exquisite identity of daily life had ended eight years ago.  Catullus felt the weight of his twenty-six years when he realised that ever since he and Valerius had ceased to be boys they had lived apart, save for the occasional weeks of a soldier’s furloughs.  Their outward paths had certainly diverged very widely.  He had chosen literature and Valerius the army.  In politics they had fallen equally far apart, Catullus following Cicero in allegiance to the constitution and the senate, Valerius continuing his father’s friendship for Caesar and faith in the new democratic ideal.  Different friendships followed upon different pursuits, and divergent mental