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, anything."

"What a stubborn little head we have under our curls!" exclaimed the
Empress, raising a graciously threatening finger.

"And what powers of apprehension," added Florus.

"Her master in language and metre told me his best pupil was a woman of
noble family and a poetess besides--Balbilla in short."

The girl colored at the words, and said with pleased excitement:

"Are you flattering me or did Hephaestion really say that?"

"Woe is me!" cried the praetor, "for Hephaestion was my master too, and
I am one of the masculine scholars beaten by Balbilla. But it is no news
to me, for the Alexandrian himself told me the same thing as Florus."

"You follow Ovid and she Sappho," said Florus; "you write in Latin and
sh