“Apollo be praised then!” stuttered the other, “but I heard you with my own ears, shouting desperately for help.” And with these words he withdrew from the parapet, still muttering and fighting the air with his arms; and Lucilia declared that she should positively die of laughing if this extraordinary sleep-walker went through any farther adventures. The moon was already high in the sky, when the party separated. Quintus led his visitor to the strangers’ rooms, wished him goodnight, and went to his own cubiculum[92] where his slaves stood yawning as they waited for him. For a time, however, he paced his room in meditation; then pausing in his walk, he looked undecidedly through the open doorway and asked: “What is the hour?” “It wants half an hour of midnight,” replied Blepyrus, his body-servant. “Very good--I do not want to sleep yet. Open the window; the air here is suffocating. Blepyrus, give me my dagger.” “The Syrian dagger?” “A useless question--when do I ever use any other?” “Here, my lord,” said Blepyrus, taking the dagger out of a closet in the wall. “It is only as a precaution. Lately all sorts of wild rabble have haunted Baiae and the neighborhood. I am going to take a walk for an hour or so,” and he went to the door. “But mind,” he added, “this late expedition is a secret.” The slaves bowed. “You know us, my lord!” they said with one accord. Quintus went out again into the arcades. The colonnaded court lay white and dream-like in the moonshine, the shadows of the statues fell blackly sharp on the dewy grass-plot and the chequered outlines of the mosaic pavement. Quintus hastened noiselessly to the postern-gate, which led from the peristyle into the park; he pushed back the bolt and was out on the terrace. Complete silence reigned around; only the very tops of the trees bent to the soft night-breeze. Quintus looked down upon Baiae. Here and there a light twinkled in the harbor; otherwise it was like a city of the dead. Then he looked down the black darkness of the shrubbery paths into the wilderness and seemed to waver, but he drew a little letter out of the belt of his tunic and studied it, meditating. “In fact,” said he to himself, “the whole affair wears the aspect of a mad adventure; it would not be the first time that malice had assumed such a disguise! But no! Such a scheme would be too clumsy; what warranty would the traitor have, that I should come alone? Besides, if I have any knowledge of love-intrigue, these lines were undoubtedly written by a woman’s hand.”