One evening when she had finished her meal, she heard some one speaking in the corridor. These were the first words she had heard since the visit of Sejanus. “What can it mean?” she asked herself. She heard the key turn in the lock, and when the door was opened she saw a soldier. “Prepare to leave at once,” he ordered. “Then I am free!” she screamed with joy. “Nay, thy prison is to be changed.” “But where shall I go?” she asked nervously. “Thou wilt leave Rome to-night with another prisoner.” Chapter XVIII It was a beautiful cloudless day in July. The atmosphere quivered like the breath of a fire over the wide Pontine Marshes. The intense, stifling heat of midday seemed to come from the infernal regions. In invisible clouds pestilential vapors, breathing death, floated in the air. Luxuriant vegetation that had fed on decayed plants for centuries gave forth a putrefying and sickening odor. Dragon-flies sported about in the fever-breeding effluvium. For weeks there had been no rain, and the stream that glides through the marsh, like a river of death, was low and nearly stagnant. By the drying up of the stream and the mire the dust had encroached upon the marsh. Here and there small whirlwinds of dust were twisting, like venomous spirits of the air. Through this death-breeding district, which appeared like a huge sore on the fair plains of Campania, led the Via Appia, connecting Terracina with Forum Appii. Over the road the dust had drifted like snow, but unlike snow it did not melt under the burning sun. At midday the road was always deserted. The beasts of burden and their drivers would rest in the inns and taverns until the sun slanted its rays. But on this day a cloud of dust moved slowly along the road. From time to time there appeared in the cloud the glitter of a helmet, the flash of a spear. A company of equestrian soldiers were escorting a carriage drawn by two horses. Evidently something urgent kept these soldiers on the road this sultry, stifling day. There being but a slight breeze, the dust fell where it rose, covering the party with a thin yellow layer. The horses breathed hard and sneezed and snorted as the irritating dust penetrated their nostrils. The sun at its zenith beat unmercifully upon the cavalcade. With eyes half closed and cast down, the men moved on, suffering under the intense heat. No one spoke. The clanking of the iron shoes of the horses and the rattling of the swords of the soldiers were the only sounds that broke the silence.