With a deep bow Titianus took the Empress’s right hand, covered with rings; but she withdrew it quickly from that of her husband’s friend and relative, as if she feared that the carefully-cherished limb—useless as it was for any practical purpose, a mere toy among hands—might suffer some injury, and wrapped it and her arm in her upper-robe. But she returned the prefect’s friendly greeting with all the warmth at her command. Though formerly at Rome she had been accustomed to see Titianus every day at her house, this was their first meeting in Alexandria; for the previous day, exhausted by the sufferings of her sea-voyage, she had been carried in a closed litter to the Caesareum, and this morning she had declined to receive his visit, as her whole time was given up to her physicians, bathing-women, and coiffeurs.
“How can you survive in this country?” she said in a low but harsh voice, which always made the hearer feel that it was that of a dull, fractious, childless woman. “At noon the sun burns you up, and in the evening it is so cold—so intolerably cold!’ As she spoke she drew her robe closer round her, but Titianus, pointing to the stoves in the middle of the hall, said:
“I hoped we had succeeded in cutting the bowstrings of the Egyptian winter, and it is but a feeble weapon.”
“Still young, still imaginative, still a poet!” said the Empress wearily. “I saw your wife a couple of hours since. Africa seems to suit her less well; I was shocked to see Julia, the handsome matron, so altered. She does not look well.”
“Years are the foe of beauty.”
“Frequently they are, but true beauty often resists their attacks.”
“You are yourself the living proof of your assertion.”
“That is as much as to say that I am growing old.”
“Nay—only that you know the secret of remaining beautiful.”
“You are a poet!” murmured the Empress with a twitch of her thin under-lip.
“Affairs of state do not favor the Muses.”
“But I call any man a poet who sees things more beautiful than they are, or who gives them finer names than they deserve—a poet, a dreamer, a flatterer—for it comes to that.”
“Ah! modesty can always find words to repel even well-merited admiration.”
“Why this foolish bandying of words?” sighed Sabina, flinging herself back in her chair. “You have been to school under the hair-splitting logicians in the Museum here, and I have not. Over there sits Favorinus, the sophist; I dare say he is proving to Ptolemaeus that the stars are mere specks of blood in our eyes, which we choose to believe are in the sky. Florus, the historian, is taking note of this weighty discussion; Pancrates, the poet, is celebrating the great thoughts of the philosopher. As to what part the philologist there can find to take in this important event you know better than I. What is the man’s name?”
“Apollonius.”
“Hadrian has nick-named him ‘the obscure.’ The more difficult it is to understand the discourses of these gentlemen the more highly are they esteemed.”
“One must dive to obtain what lies at the bottom of the water—all that floats on the surface is borne by the waves, a plaything for children. Apollonius is a very learned man.”
“Then my husband ought to leave him among his disciples and his books. It was his wish that I should invite these people to my table. Florus and Pancrates I like—not the others.”
“I can easily relieve you of the company of Favorinus and Ptolemaeus; send them to meet the Emperor.”
“To what end?”
“To entertain him.”
“He has his plaything with him,” said Sabina, and her thin lips curled with an expression of bitter contempt.
“His artistic eye delights in the beauty of Antinous, which is celebrated, but which it has not yet been my privilege to see.”
“And you are very anxious to see this marvel?”
“I cannot deny it.”
“And yet you want to postpone your meeting with Caesar?” said Sabina, and a keen glance of inquiry and distrust twinkled in her little eyes.
“Why do you want to delay my husband’s arrival?”
“Need I tell you,” said Titianus eagerly, “how greatly I shall rejoice to see once more my sovereign, the companion of my youth, the greatest and wisest of men, after a separation of four years? What would I not give if he were here already! And yet I would rather that he should arrive in fourteen days than in eight.”
“What reason can you have?”
“A mounted messenger brought me a letter to-day in which the Emperor tells me that he proposes to inhabit the old palace at Lochias, and not the Caesareum.”
At these words Sabina’s forehead clouded, her gaze, dark and blank, was fixed on her lap, and biting her under-lip, she muttered:
“Because I am here.”
Titianus made as though he had not heard these words, and continued in an easy tone:
“There he has a wide outlook into the distance, which is what he has loved from his youth up. But the old building is much dilapidated, and though I have already begun to exert all the forces at my command, with the assistance of our admirable architect, Pontius, to restore a portion of it at any rate, and make it a habitable and not too uncomfortable residence, the time is too short to do anything thoroughly worthy—”
“I wish to see my husband here, and the sooner the better,” interrupted the Empress with decision. Then she turned towards the row of pillars which stood by the right-hand wall of the hall, and which were at some distance from her couch, calling out “Verus.” But her voice was so weak that it did not reach the person addressed, so turning to the prefect, she said: “I beg of you to call Verus to me, the praetor Lucius Aurelius Verus.” Titianus immediately obeyed.
As he entered the hall he had already exchanged friendly greetings with the man to whom the Empress wished to speak. He now did not succeed in attracting his attention till he stood close at his elbow, for he formed the centre of a small group of men and women who were hanging on his words. What he was saying in a subdued voice must have been extraordinarily diverting, for it could be seen that his hearers were making the greatest efforts to keep their suppressed laughter from breaking out into a shout that would shake the very hall, a noise the Empress detested. When the prefect came up to Verus, a young girl, whose pretty head was crowned by a perfect thicket of little ringlets, was just laying her hand on his arm and saying:
“Nay-that is too much; if you go on like this, for the future whenever you speak I shall stop my ears with my hands, as sure as my name is Balbilla.”
“And as sure as you are descended from King Antiochus,” added Verus bowing.
“Always the same,” laughed the prefect, nodding to the audacious jester.
“Sabina wants to speak to you.”
“Directly, directly,” said Verus. “My story is a true one, and you all ought to be grateful to me for having released you from that tedious philologer who has now button-holed my witty friend Favorinus. I like your Alexandria, Titianus; still it is not a great capital like Rome. The people have not yet learned not to be astonished; they are perpetually in amazement. When I go out driving—”
“Your runners ought to fly before you with roses in their hair and wings on their shoulders like Cupids.”
“In honor of the Alexandrian ladies?”
“As if the Roman ladies in Rome, and the fair Greeks at Athens,” interrupted Balbilla.
“The