Nevertheless, with unconscious inconsistency, he immediately began to show wherein the campaign could have been improved, and how many gross mistakes were visible in every portion of it--how the force of Mutius should have been diverged more in advancing inland--how, in the battle along the shore, the three-oared galleys of Agricola should have been drawn up to support the attack--the consequence of this omission, if the leading cohort had met with a repulse--and the like. All this he marked out upon the floor with a piece of coal, taking but little heed that AEnone could not follow him; and step by step, in the ardor of criticism, he advanced so far that he was soon ready to prove that the campaign had been most wofully misconducted, and was only indebted to accident for success. 'But it is of little use for me to talk, if I cannot act as well,' he at length concluded, rising from the floor. 'And how could I act any part, placed as I am? The father of the wife of the imperator Sergius Vanno should be the leader of a cohort rather than of a mere century; and be otherwise lodged than in this poor place. Then would they listen to him.' He spoke bitterly and enviously, exhibiting in his whole tone as well as in his words his besetting weakness. For a while AEnone did not answer. It was as far from her duty as from her taste and pleasure to remind him, even if she could have done so to his comprehension, that her husband had already advanced him as far as was possible or fitting, and had otherwise provided for him in various ways as well as could reasonably be expected. The views of the centurion were of a far different nature. In giving his daughter to the patrician he had meanly intended thereby to rise high in life--had anticipated ready promotion beyond what his ignorance would have justified--had supposed that he would be admitted upon an equal social footing among the friends of Sergius, not realizing that his own native roughness and brutishness must have forbidden such a connection--had dazzled his eyes too wilfully with pictures of the wealth and influence and glory that would fall to his lot. As long, therefore, as so many of those gilded imaginings had failed in their promise, it seemed as nothing to him that Sergius, in the first flush of admiration for the daughter, had removed the father from rough provincial to more pleasing and relaxing urban duties, had purchased him a house befitting his station, and had lightened his condition in various ways. 'But we are gradually doing better,' AEnone said at length, striving to cheer him by identifying her fortunes more nearly with his own, 'This is a finer place than we had to live in at Ostia. Think how narrow and crowded we were then. And now I see that we have a new slave to open for us, while at Ostia we had only old Mitus. Indeed, we are very comfortable.'