little
hands.

"A swarm of bees, a colony of ants, have taken possession of the palace.
Hands black, white and brown--more than we could count, are busy there
and of all the hundreds of workmen which are astir there, not one got in
the way of another, for one little man orders and manages them all,
just as the prescient wisdom of the gods guides the stars through the
'gracious and merciful night' so that they may never push or run against
each other."

"I must put in a word on behalf of Pontius the architect," interposed
Verus. "He is a man of at least average height."

"Let us admit it to satisfy your sense of justice," returned Balbilla.
"Let us admit it--a man of average height, with a papyrus-roll in his
right-hand and a stylus in the left, controls them. Now, does my way of
stating it please you better?"

"It can never displease me," answered the praetor. "Let Balbilla go on
with her story," commanded the Empress.

"What we saw was chaos," continued the girl, "still in the confusion we
could divine the elements of an orderly creation in the future; nay, it
was even visible to the eye."

"And not unfrequently stumbled over with the foot," laughed the praetor.
"If it had been dark, and if the laborers had been worms, we must have
trodden half of them to death--they swarmed so all over the pavement."

"What were they doing?"

"Every thing," answered Balbilla quickly. "Some were polishing damaged
pieces, others were laying new bits of mosaic in the empty places from
which it had formerly been removed, and skilled artists were painting
colored figures on smooth surfaces of plaster. Every pillar and every
statue was built round with a scaffolding reaching to the ceiling on
which men were 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