hat the satyrs had whispered to the ear of that nymph
various secrets of life? How couldst thou help looking on those marks?"

"It is longer since I have put on the toga than seems to thee," said
Vinicius, "and before little Aulus ran up, I looked carefully at those
marks, for I know that frequently maidens in Greece and in Rome draw on
the sand a confession which their lips will not utter. But guess what
she drew!"

"If it is other than I supposed, I shall not guess."

"A fish."

"What dost thou say?"

"I say, a fish. What did that mean,--that cold blood is flowing in her
veins? So far I do not know; but thou, who hast called me a spring bud
on the tree of life, wilt be able to understand the sign certainly."

"Carissime! ask such a thing of Pliny. He knows fish. If old Apicius
were alive, he could tell thee something, for in the course of his
life he ate more fish than could find place at one time in the bay of
Naples."

Further conversation was interrupted, since they were borne into crowded
streets where the noise of people hindered them.

From the Vicus Apollinis they turned to the Boarium, and then entered
the Forum Romanum, where on clear days, before sunset, crowds of idle
people assembled to stroll among the columns, to tell and hear news, to
see noted people borne past in litters, and finally to look in at the
jewellery-shops, the book-shops, the arches where coin was changed,
shops for silk, bronze, and all other articles with which the buildings
covering that part of the market placed opposite the Capitol were
filled.

One-half of the Forum, immediately under the rock of the Capitol, was
buried already in shade; but the columns of the temples, placed higher,
seemed golden in the sunshine and the blue. Those lying lower cast
lengthened shadows on marble slabs. The place was so filled with columns
everywhere that the eye was lost in them as in a forest.

Those buildings and columns seemed huddled together. They towered some
above others, they stretched toward the right and the left, they climbed
toward the height, and they clung to the wall of the Capitol, or some
of them clung to others, like greater and smaller, thicker and thinner,
white or gold colored tree-trunks, now blooming under architraves,
flowers of the acanthus, now surrounded with Ionic corners, now finished
with a simple Doric quadrangle. Above that forest gleamed colored
triglyphs; from tympans stood forth the sculptured forms of go