“I might not have hesitated,” Commodus resumed, “if Calvaster had come to me. But he pops up in a full meeting of the College of Pontiffs and says he saw you, after midnight and before dawn, on the Appian Road, between Aricia and Bovillae, in a litter that didn’t belong to you and with Vocco on horseback beside it. That puts all the Pontiffs in possession of the facts and on the watch to see how I’ll decide, if I do decide. Calvaster made sure of proving those facts, for he had two highly respectable and respected nobles to swear that they were with him and saw Vocco and the litter and knew the litter for Nemestronia’s. That he had any number of witnesses to swear to the frequency of your visits to Vocco’s house, your habit of dining there and the freedom with which you treated him. “My impulse was to tell Calvaster I disbelieved any story he fathered, that I had my Father’s instructions discrediting him, that I knew all about your intimacy with Flexinna and her husband, that I knew all about your excursion to Aricia and why you went and that I approved and that was the end of it. I have told you why I hesitated. “But I was inclined that way. I have talked with Lutorius and Causidiena and Numisia. They feel towards you as my Father felt. They believe in you and in your worthiness as a priestess, and they minimize your irregularities. I sent for Flexinna and talked with her. She deserves consideration, if only because she is the mother of the largest family to be found among our nobility, even among our gentry. She hoots at the idea of anything improper between you and Vocco, in act or thought. She evidently tells the truth. It is plain that she and Vocco are a devoted pair, that you and he never did anything wrong or thought of anything wrong. I sent for Vocco and talked with him. I am all but clear what I should do, but I am not quite clear. “Now, there are only two ways to settle this: one is for me to settle it myself and out of hand. The other is to have a formal trial of you before the College of Pontiffs. “If you are tried you’ll be condemned. All you can say of the innocence of your intimacy with Vocco, all you can say of the innocence of your regard for Almo, all I can say of my Father’s high esteem of you, of his injunctions regarding you, will not avail to save you. The Pontiffs will not heed the considerations which were so plain to Father and are so plain to me and Lutorius and Numisia. They will say it makes no difference whether you went to Aricia because of solicitude for Almo or on account of an intrigue with Vocco. They will hold that such a manifestation of interest in Almo proves you almost as unfit to be a Vestal as if it were certain that you were philandering with Vocco.