“My happiest fortune consists in this: that Venus Victrix favors me. But we are not yet at the end of our story; our Lesbian swan met at Lochias with another rare bird, an artist in statuary.”
“How long have the sculptors been reckoned among birds?” asked Sabina. “At the utmost can they be compared to woodpeckers.”
“When they work in wood,” laughed Verus. “Our artist, however, is an assistant of Papias, and handles noble materials in the grand style. On this occasion, however, he is building a statue out of a very queer mixture of materials.”
“Verus may very well call our new acquaintance a bird,” interrupted Balbilla, “for as we approached the screen behind which he is working he was whistling a tune with his lips, so pure and cheery, and loud, that it rang through the empty hall above all the noise of the workmen. A nightingale does not pipe more sweetly. We stood still to listen till the merry fellow, who had no idea that we were by, was silent again; and then hearing the architect’s voice, he called to him over the screen. ‘Now we must clap Urania’s head on; I saw it clearly in my mind and would have had it finished with a score of touches, but Papias said he had one in the workshop. I am curious to see what sort of a sugarplum face, turned out by the dozen, he will stick on my torso—which will please me, at any rate, for a couple of days. Find me a good model for the bust of the Sappho I am to restore. A thousand gadflies are buzzing in my brain—I am so tremendously excited! What I am planning now will come to something!’ ”
Balbilla, as she spoke the last words, tried to mimic a man’s deep voice, and seeing the Empress smile she went on eagerly.
“It all came out so fresh, from a heart full to bursting of happy vigorous creative joy, that it quite fired me, and we all went up to the screen and begged the sculptor to let us see his work.”
“And you found?” asked Sabina.
“He positively refused to let us into his retreat,” replied the praetor; “but Balbilla coaxed the permission out of him, and the tall young fellow seems to have really learnt something. The fall of the drapery that covers the Muse’s figure is perfectly thought out with reference to possibility—rich, broadly handled, and at the same time of surprising delicacy. Urania has drawn her mantle closely round her, as if to protect herself from the keen night-air while gazing at the stars. When he has finished his Muse, he is to repair some mutilated busts of women; he was fixing the head of a finished Berenice to-day, and I proposed to him to take Balbilla as the model for his Sappho.”
“A good idea” said the Empress. “If the bust is successful I will take him with me to Rome.”
“I will sit to him with pleasure,” said the girl. “The bright young fellow took my fancy.”
“And Balbilla his,” added the praetor’s wife; “he gazed at her as a marvel, and she promised him that, with your permission, she would place her face at his disposal for three hours to-morrow.”
“He begins with the head,” interposed Verus. “What a happy man is an artist such as he! He may turn about her head, or lay her peplum in folds without reproof or repulse, and to-day when we had to get past bogs of plaster, and lakes of wet paint, she scarcely picked up the hem of her dress, and never once allowed me—who would so willingly have supported her—to lift her over the worst places.”
Balbilla reddened and said angrily:
“Really Verus, in good earnest, I will not allow you to speak to me in that way, so now you know it once for all; I have so little liking for what is not clean that I find it quite easy to avoid it without assistance.”
“You are too severe,” interrupted the Empress with a hideous smile. “Do not you think Domitia Lucilla, that she ought to allow your husband to be of service to her?”
“If the Empress thinks it right and fitting,” replied the lady raising her shoulders, and with an expressive movement of her hands. Sabina quite took her meaning, and suppressing another yawn she said angrily:
“In these days we must be indulgent toward a husband who has chosen Ovid’s amatory poems as his faithful companion. What is the matter Titianus?”
While Balbilla had been relating her meeting with the sculptor Pollux, a chamberlain had brought in to the prefect an important letter, admitting of no delay. The state official had withdrawn to the farther side of the room with it, had broken the strong seal and had just finished reading it, when the Empress asked her question.
Nothing of what went on around her escaped Sabina’s little eyes, and she had observed that while the governor was considering the document addressed to him he had moved uneasily. It must contain something of importance.
“An urgent letter,” replied Titianus, “calls me home. I must take my leave, and I hope ere long to be able to communicate to you something agreeable.”
“What does that letter contain?”
“Important news from the provinces,” said Titianus.
“May I inquire what?”
“I grieve to say that I must answer in the negative. The Emperor expressly desired that this matter should be kept secret. Its settlement demands the promptest haste, and I am therefore unfortunately obliged to quit you immediately.”
Sabina returned the prefect’s parting salutations with icy coldness and immediately desired to be conducted to her private rooms to dress herself for supper.
Balbilla escorted her, and Florus betook himself to the “Olympian table,” the famous eating-house kept by Lycortas, of whom he had been told wonders by the epicures at Rome.
When Verus was alone with his wife he went up in a friendly manner and said:
“May I drive you home again?”
Domitia Lucilla had thrown herself on a couch, and covered her face with her hands, and she made no reply. “May I?” repeated the praetor. As his wife persisted in her silence, he went nearer to her, laid his hand on her slender fingers that concealed her face, and said:
“I believe you are angry with me!” She pushed away his hand, with a slight movement, and said: “Leave me.”
“Yes, unfortunately I must leave you. Business takes me into the city and I will—”
“You will let the young Alexandrians, with whom you revelled through the night, introduce you to new fair ones—I know it.”
“There are in fact women here of incredible charm,” replied Verus quite coolly. “White, brown, copper-colored, black—and all delightful in their way. I could never be tired of admiring them.”
“And your wife?” asked Lucilla, facing him, sternly. “My wife? yes, my fairest. Wife is a solemn title of honor and has nothing to do with the joys of life. How could I mention your name in the same hour with those of the poor children who help me to beguile an idle hour.”
Domitia Lucilla was used to such phrases, and yet on this occasion they gave her a pang. But she concealed it, and crossing her arms she said resolutely and with dignity:
“Go your way—through life with your Ovid, and your gods of love, but do not attempt to crush innocence under the wheels of your chariot.”
“Balbilla do you mean,” asked the praetor with a loud laugh. “She knows how to take care of herself and has too much spirit to let herself get entangled in erotics. The little son of Venus has nothing to say to two people who are such good friends as she and I are.”
“May I believe you?”
“My word for it, I ask nothing of her but a kind word,” cried he, frankly offering his hand to his wife. Lucilla only touched it lightly with her fingers and said:
“Send me back to Rome. I have an unutterable longing to see my children, particularly