I had been too inert to worry about anything, but I almost worried
at the thought of their disappointment, through my relapse.
Tanno told me that he, knowing the Emperor's character pretty well, had
taken it upon himself to have them passed in with him as the Emperor had
ordered, and had himself asked permission to present them and had
presented them. The next day, he said, everyone of them had returned home.
I heaved a deep sigh of relief: my tenants and my Sabine Estate were off
my mind; I might be entirely easy about all things in Sabinum.
He then told me what a brilliant success Marcia was among the pleasure-
loving, novelty-loving, luxurious high-living set in our city society.
"Since the enforcement of the old-fashioned laws relaxed and became a dead
letter and some were even repealed," he said, "not a few men of equestrian
rank have married freed-women and such occurrences no longer cause any
scandal or much remark. But the results are not generally productive of
any social success for the ill-assorted pair.
"I have known a few freedwomen married to men of wealth, and equestrian
rank, who gained some vague approximation of social standing among the
wives of their husbands' friends. But Marcia is the first freedwoman I
ever knew or heard of to be treated, by everybody and at once, as if she
had been freeborn and since birth in her husband's class.
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