Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - Quo Vadis (1897 Curtin translation).djvu/20

4 Asklepios. When I was troubled a little last year in my bladder, they prescribed for me. I saw that they were tricksters, but I said to myself: ‘What harm! The world stands on deceit, and life is an illusion. The soul is an illusion too. But one must have reason enough to distinguish pleasant from painful illusions.’ I shall give command to burn in my hypocaustum cedar-wood sprinkled with ambergris, for during life I prefer perfumes to stenches. As to Kypris, to whom thou hast confided me, I have known her guardianship to the extent that I have twinges in my right foot. But as to the rest she is a good goddess! I suppose that thou wilt bear sooner or later white doves to her altar.”

“True,” answered Vinicius. “The arrows of the Parthians have not reached my body, but a dart of Amor has struck me—unexpectedly, a few stadia from a gate of this city.”

“By the white knees of the Graces! thou wilt tell me of this at a leisure hour.”

“I have come purposely to get thy advice,” answered Marcus.

But at that moment the epilatores came, and occupied themselves with Petronius. Marcus, throwing aside his tunic, entered a bath of tepid water, for Petronius invited him to a plunge bath.

“Ah, I have not even asked whether thy feeling is reciprocated,” said Petronius, looking at the youthful body of Marcus, as it were, cut out of marble. “Had Lysippos seen thee, thou wouldst be ornamenting now the gate leading to the Palatine, as a statue of Hercules in youthful years.”

The young man smiled with satisfaction, and began to sink in the bath, splashing warm water abundantly on the mosaic which represented Hera at the moment when she was imploring Sleep to lull Zeus to rest. Petrouius looked at him with the satisfied eye of an artist.

But when he had finished and yielded himself in turn to the epilatores, a lector came in with a bronze tube at his breast and rolls of paper in the tube.

“Dost wish to listen?” asked Petronius.

“If it is thy creation, gladly!” answered Marcus; “if not, I prefer conversation. Poets are seizing people at present on every street corner.”

“Of course they are. Thou wilt not pass any basilica, bath, library, or book-shop without seeing a poet