“Manifestly you are telling the truth about your acts, your impulses and your thoughts, I judge you a pure-minded, clean-hearted Vestal, most suitable for her duties. Vesta understands and is glad of your good intentions and pleased with your struggles to master yourself. You are most acceptable to her. You will bring no curses on Rome, but your prayers will be heard and you will bring many blessings on the Empire. Be comforted!” “I am,” said Brinnaria simply, “and I shall stay comforted.” BOOK II--THE REVOLT OF DESPONDENCY CHAPTER VIII - SCOURGING AFTER her audience with the Emperor, Brinnaria felt more at peace with herself, succeeded better in curbing her native wildness, incurred less and less disapprobation and won increasingly the respect and affection of her elders. Her outbursts were less frequent and less violent; she learned to hold her tongue, to appear calm, to stand with dignity, to move with deliberation. Her admiration for Causidiena and Numisia and of their statuesque attitudes and queenly movements helped her a great deal by both conscious and unconscious imitation. It helped her more to find that she was succeeding better than Meffia. At first Brinnaria had been notably more prone than Meffia to assume gawky or ungainly postures, and, as she was the bigger of the two, she was the more conspicuous. Before long she began to improve in her bearing, but Meffia did not. Brinnaria held herself erect, head up and shoulders back. Meffia slouched and sagged along, a semi-boneless creature, her clothing hanging on her baggily and unbecomingly. The difference was particularly noticeable at meals. In the Roman world all well-to-do people lay down to meals luxuriously extended on broad sofas. Brinnaria had always had trouble about her meal-time attitudes, and her mild easy-going mother had often had to speak to her and bid her remember herself. In the Atrium she had found her legs kept up their old habits of getting into strange postures, her feet seemed distressingly in evidence, and her knees always in the wrong place. Causidiena, tactful and sympathetic, solved the problem of how to influence her by getting her to watch Meffia and to contrast her with Manlia and Gargilia. They were almost as statuesque as their two elders, who reclined at table in attitudes scarcely less majestic than those of the Fates on the Parthenon pediment. Meffia sprawled uncouthly and was forever spreading her knees apart, generally with one up in the air. Her postures were so disgusting that Brinnaria was hot all over with determination not to be like Meffia. She succeeded. Great was her exultation when she perceived that it was no longer Brinnaria and Meffia who gave cause for concern to Causidiena, but Meffia and Brinnaria, great her triumph when she made sure that Causidiena had ceased worrying about her, or worried only at long intervals, but was perpetually solicitous concerning Meffia.