Suddenly turning from a side street into one of the main thoroughfares of the city, she encountered the co-Emperor Lucius Verus with his official escort. It was during the busy days preceding his departure for Antioch and his great campaign against the Parthians. Verus, roused from his devotion to sport and pleasure, was feverish with enthusiasm and full of mercurial energy. He bustled in and out of Rome, inspecting camps, presiding at ceremonials and keeping everything in a ferment. That day he was returning from an inspection amid a large and gorgeous retinue. Brinnaria had a blurred vision of splendid uniforms and dazzling accoutrements. Her vision was blurred because her eyes filled with tears; she turned hot and cold and almost fainted with emotion, when the Emperor’s twenty-four lictors lowered their fasces, the whole procession halted, the escort and the Emperor himself swerved their horses aside to let her pass and remained at the salute until she had passed. The sudden realization of the importance of her official position overwhelmed her. As she drove on, when she recovered herself, she meditated on the experience, and told herself that she must live up to her exalted station, that she must never, never, never for such as one instant, forget herself or behave otherwise than as became a Vestal. On the very same drive, before she returned to the Atrium, she completely forgot herself. It was a hot, sultry afternoon and it suited her coachman to drive homeward along the Subura, that thronged and unsavory Bowery of ancient Rome. Three street urchins were teasing and maltreating a rough coated, muddy little cur. Brinnaria called imperiously to her lictor to interfere. He was too far ahead to hear her. Her coachman had all he could do to control her mettlesome span of Spanish mares. She spoke to the boys and they laughed at her. Before she knew it she had flung open her carriage door, had leapt out, had cuffed soundly the ears of the three dumbfounded gamins, and was back among her cushions, the dog in her arms. This escapade brought upon her a visit from the Pontifex of Vesta, the semi-globular Faltonius Bambilio, diffusing pomposity. From him she had to listen to a long lecture on deportment and to a reading of the minutes of the meeting of the College of Pontiffs which had discussed her public misbehavior. CHAPTER VI - NOTORIETY WITHIN a month she did far worse. She perpetrated, in fact, a deed with the fame of which not only the city, but the Empire rang; made herself notorious everywhere.