Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Last Days of Pompeii

BOOK THE SECOND 3. Chapter III (continued)

The ancient Italians were like the modern, there was nothing they would not sell, much less a poor blind girl.

'I paid six sestertia for her, she is worth twelve now,' muttered Stratonice.

'You shall have twenty; come to the magistrates at once, and then to my house for your money.'

'I would not have sold the dear girl for a hundred but to oblige noble Clodius,' said Burbo, whiningly. 'And you will speak to Pansa about the place of designator at the amphitheatre, noble Clodius? it would just suit me.'

'Thou shalt have it,' said Clodius; adding in a whisper to Burbo, 'Yon Greek can make your fortune; money runs through him like a sieve: mark to-day with white chalk, my Priam.'

'An dabis?' said Glaucus, in the formal question of sale and barter.

'Dabitur,' answered Burbo.

'Then, then, I am to go with you--with you? O happiness!' murmured Nydia.

'Pretty one, yes; and thy hardest task henceforth shall be to sing thy Grecian hymns to the loveliest lady in Pompeii.'

The girl sprang from his clasp; a change came over her whole face, bright the instant before; she sighed heavily, and then once more taking his hand, she said:

'I thought I was to go to your house?'

'And so thou shalt for the present; come, we lose time.'