"You know too few of them," replied Herculanus reprovingly. "I'm not of your opinion!" retorted the Illyrian, laughing. "I've never had much time for reading. But I sometimes ride beside your uncle through the olive woods of Aquitania, the vineyards of the Mosella, or the marshy forests of the Alemanni: he has an inexhaustible memory and can repeat his verses for miles." "Yes," the poet assented complacently, "my memory must supply the place of imagination." "Wouldn't it be better if you had imagination, and your readers took pleasure in remembering what it created?" asked the soldier. "My uncle can repeat the whole of Virgil." "Yes, that is evident--in his verses! The reader often doesn't know where Virgil and Ovid end and Ausonius begins. But Ausonius prefers to recite his own poetry." The latter nodded pleasantly. "That's the best thing about you. Prefect; though a little vain, like all verse-writers, your heart is in the right place: a warm, kind heart which never takes offence at a friend's jest." "I should be both stupid and contemptible if I did that." "As a reward I'll tell you now that I owe an exquisite night to one of your poems--or a portion of it." The poet, much pleased, raised himself on the lectus: "What poem?" "Your 'Mosella.'" "Yes, yes," replied Ausonius smiling, "I like it very much, too." "It is divine!" Herculanus protested. "I'm no theologian," said Saturninus, laughing, "to understand divine things. But the most beautiful part of the poem is the description of the various kinds of fish in the river." "Yes, yes," observed the author, smiling as he slowly sipped his wine, "verses eighty-two to one hundred and forty-nine: they are very pretty, especially the euphony." "Oh, never mind the euphony. I read it in the evening, and fell asleep." "Barbarian!" exclaimed the poet. "But in my dreams I saw before me the most delicious fish; the salm--" "'Thee, too, I praise, O salmon, with thy roseate flesh!'" Ausonius quoted. "The trout." "'Then the trout, its back besprinkled with tiny crimson stars.' "That's what I call a fine line." "The grayling." "'And the swift grayling, escaping from the eye with rapid leaps!'" "Yes, but not as you describe them, alive in the Mosella--there is nothing I enjoy eating more than a fine fish! No, I saw them before me on silver dishes, baked, broiled, and in dainty stews; and in my dream I tasted them all. When I woke, I licked my lips and blessed Ausonius: no poet has ever given me so much pleasure." He laughed and drained his goblet. CHAPTER X.