ose
barbarian extraction he had heard previously from Vinicius. Hence he
looked with an inquiring glance at Pomponia; but she could not give
him an answer, for she was looking at that moment, with a smile, at the
pride reflected on the face of her husband.

He was not able to conceal that pride. First, he had become attached
to Lygia as to his own daughter; and second, in spite of his old Roman
prejudices, which commanded him to thunder against Greek and the spread
of the language, he considered it as the summit of social polish. He
himself had never been able to learn it well; over this he suffered in
secret. He was glad, therefore, that an answer was given in the language
and poetry of Homer to this exquisite man both of fashion and letters,
who was ready to consider Plautius's house as barbarian.

"We have in the house a pedagogue, a Greek," said he, turning to
Petronius, "who teaches our boy, and the maiden overhears the lessons.
She is a wagtail yet, but a dear one, to which we have both grown
attached."

Petronius looked through the branches of woodbine into the garden, and
at the three persons who were playing there. Vinicius had thrown aside
his toga, and, wearing only his tunic, was striking the ball, which
Lygia, standing opposite, with raised arms was trying to catch. The
maiden did not make a great impression on Petronius at the first glance;
she seemed to him too slender. But from the moment when he saw her more
nearly in the triclinium he thought to himself that Aurora might look
like her; and as a judge he understood that in her there was something
uncommon. He considered everything and estimated everything; hence her
face, rosy and clear, her fresh lips, as if set for a kiss, her eyes
blue as the azure of the sea, the alabaster whiteness of her forehead,
the wealth of her dark hair, with the reflection of amber or Corinthian
bronze gleaming in its folds, her slender neck, the divine slope of her
shoulders, the whole posture, flexible, slender, young with the youth of
May and of freshly opened flowers. The artist was roused in him, and the
worshipper of beauty, who felt that beneath a statue of that maiden one
might write "Spring." All at once he remembered Chrysothemis, and pure
laughter seized him. Chrysothemis seemed to him, with golden powder on
her hair and darkened brows, to be fabulously faded,--something in
the nature of a yellowed rose-tree shedding its leaves. But still Rome
envied him that C