Here she had received from time to time glowing accounts of his success all exaggerated as they came to her, through the eager desire of the narrators to give her pleasure.
[Sidenote: Pompey's arrival at Mitylene.] [Sidenote: His meeting with Cornelia.] From this high elevation of honor and happiness the ill-fated Cornelia suddenly fell, on the arrival of Pompey's solitary vessel at Mitylene, bringing as it did, at the same time, both the first intelligence of her husband's fall, and himself in person, a ruined and homeless fugitive and wanderer.

The meeting was sad and sorrowful.

Cornelia was overwhelmed at the suddenness and violence of the shock which it brought her, and Pompey lamented anew the dreadful disaster that he had sustained, at finding how inevitably it must involve his beloved wife as well as himself in its irreparable ruin.
[Sidenote: Pompey gathers a little fleet.] The pain, however, was not wholly without some mingling of pleasure.

A husband finds a strange sense of protection and safety in the presence and sympathy of an affectionate wife in the hour of his calamity.

She can, perhaps do nothing, but her mute and sorrowful concern and pity comfort and reassure him.