Page:The poems of Gaius Valerius Catullus - Francis Warre Cornish.djvu/27



against your will. But you will be sorry, when your favours are no more desired, ah, poor wretch! what life is left for you? Who now will visit you? to whom will you seem fair? whom now will you love? by whose name will you be called? whom will you kiss? whose lips will you press? But you, Catullus, be resolved and firm.

Veranius, preferred by me to three hundred thousand out of all the number of my friends, have you then come home to your own hearth and your affectionate brothers and your aged mother? You have indeed; O joyful news to me! I shall look upon you safe returned, and hear you telling of the country and its history, the various tribes of the Hiberians, as is your way, and drawing your neck nearer to me I shall kiss your beloved mouth and eyes. O, of all men more blest than others, who is more glad, more blest than I?

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My dear Varus had taken me from the forum, where I was idling, to pay a visit to his mistress, a little thing, as I thought at a first glance, not at all amiss in manner or looks. When we got there, we fell talking of this and that, and amongst other things, what sort of place Bithynia was now, how its affairs were going on, whether I had made any money there. I answered (what was true) that as things now are neither the praetors themselves nor their staff had found any means of coming back fatter than they went, especially as they had for a