They would have preserved all that forever. Now it is all lost, gone from them irretrievably."
"Oh, the pity of it!"
"Don't talk to me. I am cheated with heaps of gems where I anticipated seeing the embodiment of the arrogance Rome has abased, of the courage and skill that accomplished so much for Rome, of the power and prestige and glory Rome has won."
Antony looked at her, bright-eyed, ten times handsomer than she had thought him.
"The embodiment!" he exclaimed. "You were never in a camp till to-day? Have you ever seen and touched fasces or standards or an eagle?"
"Fasces I have seen, of course, but never touched," she beamed, catching fire from his enthusiasm. "But I was a child when Pompey returned from Sicily and Africa and triumphed. I never saw an eagle or any standard."
"I should have thought," Antony wondered, "that you would have had Pompey take you to the treasury and show you his fasces and standards and eagles while they were deposited there."
"One never does the sight-seeing that is easiest," Mucia replied. "If I had thought of it I should have put it off, and in fact I never thought of it at all."
