He entered the house of the Vestals and sent for his aunt.

Fabia came quickly enough, for her heart had been with her nephew all these days that tried men's souls.

The noble woman put her arms around the youth--for he was still hardly more--and pressed him to her breast.
"Aunt Fabia," said Drusus, growing very weak and pale, now that he felt her warm, loving caress, "do you know that in two or three days you will have as nephew a proscribed insurgent, perhaps with a price on his head, who perhaps is speedily to die by the executioner, like the most ignoble felon ?" "Yes," said Fabia, also very pale, yet smiling with a sweet, grave smile--the smile of a goddess who grieves at the miseries of mortal men, yet with divine omniscience glances beyond, and sees the happiness evolved from pain.

"Yes, I have heard of all that is passing in the Senate.

And I know, too, that my Quintus will prove himself a Fabian and a Livian, to whom the right cause and the good of the Republic are all--and the fear of shame and death is nothing." And then she sat down with him upon a couch, and took his head in her lap, and stroked him as if she were his mother.