The Conclusion - Page 2

the reader in Chapter XIV., as
exhibiting to Vetranio the store of offal which he had collected during
the famine for the consumption of the palace) had contrived of late
greatly to increase his master's confidence in him. On the organisation
of the Banquet of Famine, he had discreetly refrained from testifying
the smallest desire to save himself from the catastrophe in which the
senator and his friends had determined to involve themselves. Securing
himself in a place of safety, he awaited the end of the orgie; and when
he found that its unexpected termination left his master still living to
employ him, appeared again as a faithful servant, ready to resume his
customary occupation with undiminished zeal.

After the dispersion of his household during the famine, and amid the
general confusion of the social system in Rome, on the raising of the
blockade, Vetranio found no one near him that he could trust but
Carrio--and he trusted him. Nor was the confidence misplaced: the man
was selfish and sordid enough; but these very qualities ensured his
fidelity to his master as long as that master retained the power to
punish and the capacity to reward.

The letter which Carrio held in his hand was addressed to him at a
villa--from which he had just returned--belonging to Vetranio, on the
shores of the Bay of Naples, and was written by the senator from Rome.
The introductory portions of this communication seemed to interest the
freedman but little: they contained praised of his diligence in
preparing the country-house for the immediate habitation of its owner,
and expressed his master's anxiety to quit Rome as speedily as possible,
for the sake of living in perfect tranquillity, and breathing the
reviving air of the sea, as the physicians had counselled. It was the
latter part of the letter that Carrio perused and re-perused, and then
meditated over with unwonted attention and labour of mind. It ran
thus:--

'I have now to repose in you a trust, which you will execute with
perfect fidelity as you value my favour or respect the wealth from which
you may obtain your reward. When you left Rome you left the daughter of
Numerian lying in danger of death: she has since revived. Questions
that I have addressed to her during her recovery have informed me of
much in her history that I knew not before; and have induced me to
purchase, for reasons of my own, a farm-house and its lands, beyond the
suburbs. (The extent of the place and its situation are written on the
vellum that is within this.) The husbandman who cultivated the property
had survived the famine, and will continue to cultivate it for me. But
it is my desire that the garden, and all that it contains, shall remain
entirely at the disposal of Numerian