The public room of this place of entertainment was not unlike the coffee-room of a good modern inn, except that it was necessarily far more full of incident and interest, because the ancients were beyond comparison more addicted to living in public than any modern nation has ever been. An Englishman who makes a similar remark of the French, in comparison with his own countrymen, has only to remember that the modern French as much excel the ancient Romans in fondness for retirement and privacy and domestic life as the English believe themselves to excel the French in the same particular. An inn did not trouble itself much with the _triclinium_, a chamber seldom used by its frequenters. Even the manners of the _triclinium_ were out of vogue here. In Crispus's public room, for instance, there was one and only one table arranged with couches around it, upon which some three or four customers, while eating and drinking, could recline according to the fashion adopted in the private houses of the rich and noble. All the other tables stood round the walls of the apartment, with benches and settees on each side, offering seats for the guests. The inner seats at these tables were generally preferred, for two reasons; the occupants saw all that passed in the room, and besides, had the wall, against which they could lean back. When Velleius Paterculus, having left Tiberius and Sejanus in the meadows near the Liris, took charge of the prætorian squadrons and of Paulus, he directed a Batavian trooper to dismount and give his horse to the prisoner. Paulus willingly sprung upon the big Flemish beast, and rode by the side of the obliging officer who had given him that conveyance. Thus they proceeded at an easy amble until they reached the post-house, to the porch of which the noise of four thousand hoofs, suddenly approaching along the paved road, had brought a group of curious gazers. Among these was the landlord, Crispus himself. A halt, as the reader must have inferred from a former incident, was occasioned at the door by the intimation conveyed to Paterculus that Paulus's sister had fainted, that she and her mother intended to seek a lodging at the inn, and that the mother and brother of the invalid would both feel grateful to the commanding officer if he could permit Paulus, upon pledging his word not to make any attempt to escape, to remain there with them. "As to the ladies," said the urbane literary soldier, "I have neither the wish nor any orders to interfere with their movements. But you, young sir, what say you? Will you give me your word to regard yourself as being in my custody till I expressly release you? Will you promise not to _abire_, _evadere_, _excedere_, or _erumpere_, as our friend Tully said?" "Tully! Who is that?" asked our hero.