They were distantly civil, or they shunned me; but my brother was their spoiled plaything.

I was as incapable as Geta was master of the art of stealing hearts; but in my childhood I needed none of them: for, if I wished for a kind word, a sweet kiss, or the love of a woman, my nurse's arms were open to me.

Nor was she an ordinary woman.

As the widow of a tribune who had fallen in my father's service, she had undertaken to attend on me.

She loved me as no one else ever did.