They had passed the corner of Cicero's villa when a litter approached from an intersecting avenue and was set down. A woman stepped out. White her hair, her dress the ancient palla and stola of white and purple, her jewels, amethysts. The rheumy emperor saw her imperfectly. "Stop!" he ordered his bearers. The woman approached and made obeisance. "Humph! Antonia," he muttered in some disappointment. But he drew his old frame together and inclined his head respectfully. "Greeting, sister," he said. "The gods attend thee." "Thou art good, Augustus. Welcome to Tusculum once more," she replied. She took the hand he extended and raised it to her lips. The old man gazed at her with a wavering eye. "Come closer. Art so gray?" he asked. "White, Caesar." He took the hand from hers and put back the vitta that covered her hair. There were the sorrows of seventy years, in its absolute whiteness, and the Roman duskiness of skin was brought out very strongly in contrast. But her eyes were still full and bright, even tender, her thin lips lacking nothing of the color of her youth. Age had not laid its withering touch on her stature or even on the fullness of her frame, but the hand, Time's infallible tally, was the worn-out hand of seventy years. She was the noblest woman of her age, _univira_,--the widow of one husband, dead in her youth, the mother of statesmen, generals and emperors, a scholar and at one time a diplomat,--in all things, the ancient spirit of the First Republic, solitary, rugged, irreproachable in the vicious age of the Caesars. "Eh! White, wholly white," he assented, running his fingers through her locks with a movement that was almost tender. "And I am thine elder. Yet," he drew himself up and defiance hardened his face, "I am not a dead man, Antonia!" "Nay, who says it, Caesar? And it is not age that hath blanched me. I was gray at forty--much more gray than thou art now." "No, no! Not age! Truly a woman's protest. But then, perchance not. Thy husband's death undid thee. How thou didst love him! Save for thine example I should say that Eros himself is dead!" After a little he muttered to himself: "Alas! What a name to conjure death! My son Drusus, thy spouse Drusus, and thy son Drusus, the Germanicus. Dead! All! and in their youth. The very name hath a sinister look." The old man shook his unsteady head and knuckled his sunken cheek. The widow's saddened face wore also some surprise. "Canst thou speak of thy son Drusus, now?" she asked. "Not in these many years have I heard thee name him." "No!" he answered shortly. "I speak of dreams; new dreams, which I mean to have the soothsayers interpret." "Tell me of them, Augustus," she urged.