"We were with him yesterday at Lochias. How everything is changed there! The pretty little gate house is gone, there is nothing more to be seen of all the cheerful bustle of builders and artists, and what were gay workshops are turned into dull, commonplace halls. The screens in the hall of the Muses had to go a week ago, and with them the young scatter- brain who set himself against my curls with so much energy that I was on the point of sacrificing them--" "Without them you would no longer be Balbilla," cried Verus eagerly. "The artist condemns all that is not permanently beautiful, but we are glad to see any thing that is graceful, and can find pleasure in it with the other children of the time. The sculptor may dress his goddesses after the fashion of graver days and the laws of his art, but mortal women--if he is wise--after the fashion of the day. However, I am heartily sorry for that clever, genial young fellow. He has offended Caesar and was turned out of the palace, and now he is nowhere to be found." "Oh!" cried Balbilla, full of regret, "poor man--and such a fine fellow! And my bust? we must seek him out. If the opportunity offers I will entreat Caesar--" "Hadrian will hear nothing about him. Pollux has offended him deeply." "From whom do you know that?" "From Antinous." "We saw him, too, only yesterday," cried Balbilla, eagerly. "If ever a man was permitted to wear the form of a god among mortals, it is he." "Romantic creature!" "I know no one who could look upon him with indifference. He is a beautiful dreamer, and the trace of suffering which we observed yesterday in his countenance is probably nothing more than the outward expression of that obscure regret, felt by all that is perfect, for the joy of development and conscious ripening into an incarnation of the ideal in its own kind, of which he is an instance in himself." The poetess spoke the last words in a rapt tone, as if the form of a god was then and there before her eyes. Verus had listened to her with a smile, but now he interrupted her, and, holding up a warning finger, he said: "Poetess, philosopher, and sweetest maiden, beware of descending from your Olympus for the sake of this boy! When imagination and dreaminess meet half-way they make a pair which float in the clouds and never even suspect the existence of that firmer ground of which your oracle speaks." "Nonsense," said Balbilla crossly. "Before we can fall in love with a statue, Prometheus must animate it with a soul and fire from heaven." "But often," retorted the praetor, "Eros proves to be a substitute for that unhappy friend of the gods." "The true or the sham Eros," asked Balbilla testily.