It was Titus, much sobered from the gay lad he once had been, and still pale from the illness caused by the sip he had taken of the poison which had carried off Britannicus. He recognised Onesimus, and a Palace rumour had that morning made him aware of the Phrygian’s peril. He looked on the slave-youth as a _protégé_ of his own, for his admission into the family of Pudens had been mainly due to his intercession. He also felt grateful to him for his ready services towards the murdered friend of his youth, and his kindly heart was filled with pity. A way of saving him had flashed across his mind, and, bidding his slaves follow him, he darted off at a pace too swift for Roman dignity. In an adjoining street he met--as he was well aware that he should meet--a beautiful and stately lady whom he knew, and who was very fond of him. It was Lælia, the senior vestal, the Virgo Maxima. Greeting her with extreme reverence, he yet ventured to make her an unsuspecting agent in his little plot. ‘Noble Lælia,’ he said, with the charm of manner which few could resist, and with a ready fertility of invention, ‘I have just seen in the book-shop of Atrectus, in the Argiletum, just opposite the Forum of Julius, a charming little copy of Virgil’s Eclogues with such a good portrait! You promised me a present on my last birthday, and said I should choose it myself. May I have that book, and will you come and buy it for me? It is my birthday to-day.’ ‘Certainly,’ said the vestal, with a smile. ‘For a boy like you, so good and steady, I would do much more than that.’ She little guessed that the birthday was a fib extemporised by Titus for his own purposes, for his birthday was on December 30. ‘Thanks, dear vestal,’ said Titus. ‘Will you not come by this short cut?’ He led her by the hand, her lictor following, into the Vicus Tuscus, which was close by the Argiletum, where he well knew that she would not fail to meet Onesimus and his escort. As they approached he said: ‘Oh, Lælia, how I should like to have your privilege of saving the lives of the wretched! See, there is some miserable slave whom they are taking to scourge or crucify. Will you not intercede for him?’ ‘For a poor _furcifer_ like that?’ asked Lælia. ‘Our high privilege is used for nobles--at the lowest, for freedmen.’ ‘Are not slaves men like ourselves?’ he asked. ‘Musonius says so; and Seneca says so. Look, what a fine youth he is! He looks as if he had been free-born; and I dare say he has done nothing really wrong.’ Lælia glanced at the pallid, beautiful face of the sufferer. It would hardly have touched her heart, accustomed as she had been to the massacres of the arena, to which Nero of late years had invited the vestal virgins. But there was something in his youth, and something in the earnest pleading of her favourite Titus--something perhaps also in the sense of power--which decided her to interfere.