l be
down upon you.'"

"Indeed," said the Empress with a pinched smile, as if she had heard some
thing that pleased her.

"Tell me something about your meeting. I am bored to death, for Verus,
Balbilla and the others have asked for leave of absence that they may go
to inspect the work doing at Lochias; I am accustomed to find that people
would rather be any where than with me. Can I wonder then that my
presence is not enough to enable a friend of my husband's to forget a
little annoyance--the impression left by some slight misunderstanding?
But my fugitives are a long time away; there must be a great deal that is
beautiful to be seen at Lochias."

The prefect suppressed his annoyance and did not express his anxiety lest
the architect and his assistants should be disturbed, but began in the
tone of the messenger in a tragedy:

"The first quarrel was fought over the order of the procession."

"Sit a little farther off," said Sabina pressing her jewelled right-hand
on her ear, as if she were suffering a pain in it. The prefect colored
slightly, but he obeyed the desire of Caesar's wife and went on with his
story, pitching his voice in a somewhat lower key than before:

"Well, it was about the procession, that the first breach of the peace
arose."

"I have heard that once already," replied the lady, yawning. "I like
processions."

"But," said the prefect, a man in the beginning of the sixties--and he
spoke with some irritation, "here as in Rome and every where else, where
they are not controlled by the absolute will of a single individual,
processions are the children of strife, and they bring forth strife, even
when they are planned in honor of a festival of Peace."

"It seems to annoy you that they should be organized in honor of
Hadrian?"

"You are in jest; it is precisely because I care particularly that they
should be carried out with all possible splendor, that I am troubling
myself about them in person, even as to details; and to my great
satisfaction I have been able even to subdue the most obstinate; still it
was scarcely my duty--"

"I fancied that you not only served the state but were my husband's
friend."

"I am proud to call myself so."

"Aye--Hadrian has many, very many friends since he has worn the purple.
Have you got over your ill temper Titianus? You must have become very
touchy. Poor Julia has an irritable husband!"

"She is less to be pitied than you think," said Titianus with dignity