Then satisfied that it would thus escape a nearer search than it was likely would be made by the murderers, when they should find that it had been removed, he walked away very rapidly toward his home.
Before he left the burial ground, however, he wiped the dagger carefully in the long grass, and hid it in the bosom of his tunic.
No more words were exchanged--the master buried in deep thought, the servant stupified with grief and terror--until they reached the house of Paullus, in a fair quarter of the town, near to the street of Carinæ, the noblest and most sumptuous in Rome.
A dozen slaves appeared within the hall, awaiting the return of their young lord, but he dismissed them all; and when they had departed, taking a small night lamp, and ordering Thrasea to waken him betimes to-morrow, that he might see the consul, he bade him be of good cheer, for that Medon's death should surely be avenged, since the gay dagger would prove a clue to the detection of his slayer. Then, passing into his own chamber, he soon lost all recollection of his hopes, joys, cares, in the sound sleep of innocence and youth.
Therefore let him be Consul; The Gods give Him joy, and make him good friend to the people. CORIOLANUS.
The morning was yet young, when Paullus Arvina, leaving his mansion on the Cælian hill by a postern door, so to avoid the crowd of clients who even at that early hour awaited his forth-coming in the hall, descended the gentle hill toward the splendid street called Carinæ, from some fanciful resemblance in its shape, lying in a curved hollow between the bases of the Esquiline, Cælian, and Palatine mounts, to the keel of a galley.
This quarter of the city was at that time unquestionably the most beautiful in Rome, although it still fell far short of the magnificence it afterward attained, when the favourite Mecænas had built his splendid palace, and laid out his unrivalled gardens, on the now woody Esquiline; and it would have been difficult indeed to conceive a view more sublime, than that which lay before the eyes of the young patrician, as he paused for a moment on the highest terrace of the hill, to inhale the breath of the pure autumnal morning.
The sun already risen, though not yet high in the east, was pouring a flood of mellow golden light, through the soft medium of the half misty atmosphere, over the varied surface of the great city, broken and diversified by many hills and hollows; and bringing out the innumerable columns, arches, and aqueducts, that adorned almost every street and square, in beautiful relief.