Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - Quo Vadis (1897 Curtin translation).djvu/18

2 oil began to rub his shapely body; and he waited with closed eyes till the heat of the laconicurn and the heat of their hands passed through him and expelled weariness.

But after a certain time he spoke, and opened his eyes; he inquired about the weather, and about the gems which the jeweller Idomeneus had promised to send him for examination that day. It appeared that the weather was beautiful, with a light breeze from the Alban hills, and that the gems had not been brought. Petronius closed his eyes again, and had given command to bear him to the tepidarium, when from behind the curtain the nomenclator looked in, announcing that young Marcus Vinicius, recently returned from Asia Minor, had come to visit him.

Petronius ordered to admit the guest to the tepidarium, to which he was borne himself. Vinicius was the son of his oldest sister, who years before had married Marcus Vinicius, a man of consular dignity from the time of Tiberius. The young man was serving then under Corbulo against the Parthians, and at the close of the war had returned to the city. Petronius had for him a certain weakness bordering on attachment, for Marcus was a beautiful and athletic young man, who knew at the same time how to preserve a certain æsthetic measure in his profligacy which Petronius prized above everything.

“A greeting to Petronius,” said the young man, entering the tepidarium with a springy step. “May all the gods grant thee success, but especially Asklepios and Kypris, for under their double protection nothing evil can meet one.”

“I greet thee in Rome, and may thy rest be sweet after war,” replied Petronius, extending his hand from between the folds of soft karbas stuff in which he was wrapped. “What’s to be heard in Armenia; or since thou wert in Asia, didst thou not stumble into Bithynia?”

Petronius on a time had been proconsul in Bithynia, and, what is more, he had governed with activity and justice. This was a marvellous contradiction in the character of the man noted for effeminacy and love of luxury; hence he was fond of mentioning those times, since they were a proof of what he was, and what he might have been had it pleased him.

“I happened to visit Heraklea,” answered Vinicius. “Corbulo sent me there with an order to assemble reinforcements.”