climbing and crowding each other just as the sailors climb
into the enemy's ships in the Naumachia."

The girl's pretty cheeks had flushed with her eager reminiscence of what
she had seen, and, as she spoke, moving her hands with expressive
gestures, the tall structure of curls which crowned her small head shook
from side to side.

"Your description begins to be quite poetical," said the Empress,
interrupting her young companion. "Perhaps the Muse may even inspire you
with verse."

"All the Pierides," said the praetor, "are represented at Lochias. We saw
eight of them, but the ninth, that patroness of the arts, who protects
the stargazer, the lofty Urania, has at present, in place of a
head--allow me to leave it to you to guess divine Sabina?"

"Well--what?"

"A wisp of straw."

"Alas," sighed the Empress. "What do you say, Florus? Are there not among
your learned and verse spinning associates certain men who resemble this
Urania?"

"At any rate," replied Florus, "we are more prudent than the goddess, for
we conceal the contents of our heads in the hard nut of the skull, and
under a more or less abundant thatch of hair. Urania displays her straw
openly."

"That almost sounds," said Balbilla laughing and pointing to her abundant
locks, "as if I especially needed to conceal what is covered by my hair."

"Even the Lesbian swan was called the fair-haired," replied Florus.

"And you are our Sappho," said the praetor's wife, drawing the girl's arm
to her bosom.

"Really! and will you not write in verse all that you have seen to-day?"
asked the Empress.

Balbilla looked down on the ground a minute and then said brightly: "It
might inspire me, everything strange that I meet with prompts me to write
verse."

"But follow the counsel of Apollonius the philologer," advised Florus.
"You are the Sappho of our day, and therefore you should write in the
ancient Aeolian dialect and not Attic Greek." Verus laughed, and the
Empress, who never was strongly moved to laughter, gave a short sharp
giggle, but Balbilla said eagerly:

"Do you think that I could not acquire it and do so? To-morrow morning I
will begin to practise myself in the old Aeolian forms."

"Let it alone," said Domitia Lucilla; "your simplest songs are always the
prettiest."

"No one shall laugh at me!" declared Balbilla pertinaciously. "In a few
weeks I will know how to use the Aeolian dialect, for I can do anything I
am determined to do--anything,