In a few minutes the trireme began to move. Slowly at first she made her way through the crowd of merchant and fishing-vessels, which lay at anchor. But the captain’s hammer-strokes beat faster and faster, and the oars dipped deeper and more strongly in the dashing waves. Now, gliding past the jetty at the end of the quay, the trireme was afloat on the open sea, and rode the broad blue waters like a swan. The men still stood gazing after the proud and beautiful vessel--Aurelius, for his part, not altogether without a vague and melancholy homesick feeling. Although he knew, that within a few hours the trireme would turn aside from her course and steer for the roads of Antium, still, the dear north-country and the image of the mother he had left behind him, suddenly seemed brought nearer to him. He had but spoken the name of his home--but it had filled his soul with yearning. He thought of the immediate future.--Ere long he too might be a fugitive, weary and persecuted like Eurymachus, escaping on board that very ship, and thanking the gods if he might only flee unrecognized. And then Rome, and all that it contained of dear and fair, would be closed against him forever. All--Claudia? the thought sank down on his soul like lead. Claudia in Rome, and he hundreds of miles away, with the fearful certainty of never seeing her again! But if she loved him--then indeed...! If she would follow him, as Peponilla[377] had followed her banished husband, amid the ice-hills of Scandia, or on the barren shores of Thule,[378] spring would blossom for him more exquisite than the rose-gardens of Paestum! But what was there to justify his hopes of such immeasurable happiness? She had given him proofs of her friendship, no doubt, and when he was reading the Thebais, or when he spoke to her of his northern home, she had a way of listening--it had often brought light and warmth to his soul like a ray of promise--but then the revulsion had been all the more violent; her greeting would sound distant and measured, her smile would seem cold and haughty. Oh! if only he might have time to conquer this indifference. But a voice was now calling him to the scene of action, and if that action were to result in failure!--He almost regretted having so unresistingly yielded to the eloquence of Cinna and to his own passionate patriotism--though indeed, as he told himself, his eager passion for Claudia was not the least of the motives that urged him to action, nay, but for that passion he might still have been hesitating. As it was, it had dragged him with the force of a possession into the whirlpool of conspiracy. He longed to stand before her--his chosen love--as a victor over tyranny, as a liberator of the empire, and say to her: “Now, noble heart, I may sue for thy love, for I have a grand advocate in the gratitude of my country.”