"Good morning, Pratinas!" said Lucius, warmly, taking the Greek's hand. "How glad we are to find you here. I wanted to ask you around to Marcus Laeca's to-night; we think he will give something of a feast, and you must see my latest sweetheart--Clyte! She is a little pearl. I have had her head cut in intaglio on this onyx; is she not pretty?" "Very pretty," said Pratinas, looking at the engraving on the ring. "But perhaps it is not right for me, a grave philosopher, to go to your banquet." "How (h)absurd! (H)of c(h)ourse you c(h)an!" lisped Flaccus, who affected Greek so far as to aspirate every word beginning with a vowel, and to change every _c_ into a _ch_. "Well," said Pratinas, laughing, for he was a dearly loved favourite of all these gilded youth, "I will see! And now Gabinius is inviting Calatinus also, and we are dispersing for the morning." "Alas," groaned Ahenobarbus, "I must go to the Forum to plead with that wretch Phormio, the broker, to arrange a new loan." "And I to the Forum, also," added Calatinus, coming up, "to continue this pest of a canvass for votes." The clients fell into line behind Calatinus like a file of soldiers, but before Pratinas could start away with the other friends, a slave-boy came running out from the inner house, to say that "the Lady Valeria would be glad of his company in her boudoir." The Greek bowed his farewells, then followed the boy back through the court of the peristylium.[35] [35] An inner private court back of the atrium. III The dressing room occupied by Valeria--once wife of Sextus Drusus and now living with Calatinus as her third husband in about four years--was fitted up with every luxury which money, and a taste which carried refinement to an extreme point, could accomplish. The walls were bright with splendid mythological scenes by really good artists; the furniture itself was plated with silver; the rugs were magnificent. The mistress of this palatial abode was sitting in a low easy-chair, holding before her a fairly large silver mirror. She wore a loose gown of silken texture, edged to an ostentatious extent with purple. Around her hovered Arsinoe and Semiramis, two handsome Greek slave-girls, who were far better looking than their owner, inasmuch as their complexions had never been ruined by paints and ointments. They were expert hairdressers, and Valeria had paid twenty-five thousand sesterces for each of them, on the strength of their proficiency in that art, and because they were said to speak with a pure Attic Greek accent. At the moment they were busy stripping off from the lady's face a thick layer of dried enamel that had been put on the night before.