upon your way. My Greek physician Stephanos has a rare prescription
for a morning head. What! Your clients await you? Well, I will see
you later at the Senate house."

The Patrician had entered his atrium, bright with rare flowers, and
melodious with strange singing birds. At the jaws of the hall, true to
his morning duties, stood Lebs, the little Nubian slave, with snow-white
tunic and turban, a salver of glasses in one hand, whilst in the other
he held a flask of a thin lemon-tinted liquid. The master of the house
filled up a bitter aromatic bumper, and was about to drink it off, when
his hand was arrested by a sudden perception that something was much
amiss in his household. It was to be read all around him--in the
frightened eyes of the black boy, in the agitated face of the keeper of
the atrium, in the gloom and silence of the little knot of ordinarii,
the procurator or major-domo at their head, who had assembled to greet
their master. Stephanos the physician, Cleios the Alexandrine reader,
Promus the steward each turned his head away to avoid his master's
questioning gaze.

"What in the name of Pluto is the matter with you all?" cried the amazed
senator, whose night of potations had left him in no mood for patience.
"Why do you stand moping there? Stephanos, Vacculus--is anything amiss?
Here, Promus, you are the head of my household. What is it, then?
Why do you turn your eyes away from me?"

The burly steward, whose fat face was haggard and mottled with anxiety,
laid his hand upon the sleeve of the domestic beside him.

"Sergius is responsible for the atrium, my lord. It is for him to tell
you the terrible thing that has befallen in your absence."