Yet he could not for a moment think so himself: his indignation at the bare idea of it lives for ever on the marble in glowing words.

"I must confess," he says, "that the anger so burnt within me that my senses almost deserted me: that you should ever have thought it possible that we could be separated but by death, was most horrible to me.

What was the need of children compared with my loyalty to you: why should I exchange certain happiness for an uncertain future?
But I say no more of this: you remained with me, for I could not yield without disgrace to myself and unhappiness to both of us.

The one sorrow that was in store for me was that I was destined to survive you." These two, we may feel sure, were wholly worthy of each other.

What she would have said of him, if he had been the first to go, we can only guess; but he has left a portrait of her, as she lived and worked in his household, which, mutilated though it is, may be inadequately paraphrased as follows: "You were a faithful wife to me," he says, "and an obedient one: you were kind and gracious, sociable and friendly: you were assiduous at your spinning (lanificia): you followed the religious rites of your family and your state, and admitted no foreign cults or degraded magic (superstitio): you did not dress conspicuously, nor seek to make a display in your household arrangements.