“I have no desire to confide in a deputy,” Brinnaria told him, “or to consider the deputy as my real spiritual father. If I feel inclined to confide I’ll make my confidences to my genuine spiritual father, not to his understrapper.” Bambilio was piqued and spoke sourly. “The Emperor,” he said, “will be far from pleased with my report of you.” “It will make no difference to me or to him what you report or whether you make any report or not,” spoke Brinnaria. “I’m going to have a talk with him myself.” “Doubtless,” Bambilio meditated. “He has sent for you to rebuke you.” “He has done nothing of the kind,” she retorted vigorously. “He has more sense. And if he had sent for me I should not have gone. I know my rights. If he wanted to talk to me, he’d have to come to me here. But as, in this case, I wanted to talk to him, I have asked for an audience and the day and the hour have been fixed. I am to have an audience to-morrow morning. And now, as I am to talk to him myself, I see no reason why I should spend more time being bored by his deputy. If you please, I should be obliged if you would terminate this interview.” Astounded and dumb, Faltonius bowed himself out. Causidiena suggested that she accompany Brinnaria on her visit to the Palace. “It would be lovely to have you with me,” Brinnaria said, “and I am ever so grateful for your offer. You are a dear and I love you. I shall want you and wish for you all the way there, all the time I am there and all the way back. I shall be scared to death. But I must go alone. In the first place it is my right, if I were only six years old, to have audience with the Emperor alone whenever I ask for it and as often as I ask for it. I am not going to abate an iota of my rights merely for my own comfort. In the second place, I must go through this unhelped and unsupported all by myself. I know it; I must fight it out alone and come through alone. He’ll be sympathetic, if I deserve it. If I don’t deserve sympathy from him I don’t deserve it from you, nor your company and your countenance, either.” Scared Brinnaria was, but even through her worst qualms of panic she was uplifted by an elating sense of her own importance. Not her encounter with Verus and his retinue, not her having remained seated when Aurelius entered the Colosseum had so poignantly made her realize how exalted was a Vestal. She drove to the Palace alone, not in her light carriage, but in her huge state coach, feeling very small in her white robes amid all that crimson upholstery, but also feeling herself a very great personage.