magnificence of which the lustre was reflected on him and on his name.

"With him, at any rate," said the old man, "one gets something for the
money. His horses cost a great deal but he knows how to win with them;
his entertainments swallow up a pretty sum, but they gain him respect
wherever he goes. He brought me a letter from the Senator Justinus, and
the worthy man tells me what a leading part he plays among the gilded
youth of the Capital. All this is not to be had for nothing, and it will
be cheap in the end. What need we care about a hundred talents more or
less! And there is something magnanimous in the lad that has given him
the spirit to feel that."

And it was not a hale old grey-beard who spoke thus, but a broken man,
whose only joy it was to lavish on his son the riches which he had long
been incapable of enjoying. The high-spirited and gifted youth, scarcely
more than a boy in years, whom he had sent to the Capital with no small
misgivings, must have led a far less lawless life than might have been
expected; of this the ruddy tinge in his sunburnt cheeks was ample
guarantee, the vigorous solidity of his muscles, and the thick waves of
his hair, which was artificially curled and fell in a fringe, as was then
the fashion, over his high brow, giving him a certain resemblance to the
portraits of Antinous, the handsomest youth in the time of the Emperor
Hadrian. Even his mother owned that he looked like health itself, and
no member of the Imperial family could be more richly, carefully and
fashionably dressed than her darling. But even in the humblest garb he
would have been a handsome--a splendid youth, and his mother's pride!
When he left home there was still a smack of the provincial about him;
but now every kind of awkwardness had vanished, and wherever he might go
--even in the Capital, he was certain to be one of the first to attract
observation and approval.