. .
I had just rendered _vultum demissa_ "with downcast eyes," when the
book was snatched from me and hurled to the far end of the
glass-house. Looking up, I saw Fortunio in a transport of passion.
"Fool--little fool! Will you be like all the commentators? Will you
forget what Virgil has said and put your own nonsense into his golden
mouth?"
He stepped across, picked up the book, found the passage, and then
turning back a page or so, read out--
"Saepta armis _solioque alte subnixa_ resedit."
"_Alte! Alte!_" he screamed: "Dido sat on high: Aeneas stood at the
foot of her throne. Listen to this:--'Then Dido, bending down her
gaze . . . '"
He went on translating. A rapture took him, and the sun beat in
through the glass roof, and lit up his eyes. He was transfigured;
his voice swelled and sank with passion, swelled again, and then, at
the words--
"Quae te tam laeta tulerunt
Saecula? Qui tanti talem genuere parentes?"
It broke, the Virgil dropped from his hand, and sinking down on his
stool he broke into a wild fit of sobbing.
"Oh, why did I read it? Why did I read this sorrowful book?"
And then checking his sobs, he put a handkerchief to his mouth, took
it away, and looked up at me with dry eyes.
"Go away, little one, Don't come again: I am going to die very soon
now."
I stole out, awed and silent, and went home. But the picture of him
kept me awake that night, and early in the morning I dressed and ran
off to the glass-house.
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