“Good morning, Uncle Pratinas,” she said sweetly.

“Good morning, Artemisia, my dear,” replied the other, giving her round neck a kiss, and a playful pinch.  “You will practise on your lyre, and let Sesostris teach you to sing.  You know we shall go back to Alexandria very soon; and it is pleasant there to have some accomplishments.”

“And must you go out so early, uncle?” said the girl.  “Can’t you stay with me any part of the day?  Sometimes I get very lonely.”

“Ah! my dear,” said Pratinas, smoothly, “if I could do what I wished, I would never leave you.  But business cannot wait.  I must go and see the noble Lucius Calatinus on some very important political matters, which you could not understand.  Now run away like a good girl, and don’t become doleful.”

Artemisia left the room, and Pratinas busied himself about the fine touches of his toilet.  When he held the silver mirror up to his face, he remarked to himself that he was not an unhandsome man.  “If I did not have to play the philosopher, and wear this thick, hot beard,[28] I would not be ashamed to show my head anywhere.”  Then while he perfumed himself with oil of saffron out of a little onyx bottle, he went on:—­

  [28] At an age when respectable men were almost invariably smooth
  shaven, the philosophers wore flowing beards, as a sort of professional
  badge.

“What dogs and gluttons these Romans are!  They have no real taste for art, for beauty.  They cannot even conduct a murder, save in a bungling way.  They have to call in us Hellenes to help them.  Ha! ha! this is the vengeance for Hellas, for the sack and razing of Corinth and all the other atrocities!  Rome can conquer with the sword; but we Greeks, though conquered, can, unarmed, conquer Rome.  How these Italians can waste their money!  Villas, statues, pretty slaves, costly vases, and tables of mottled cypress,[29] oysters worth their weight in gold, and I know not what else!  And I, poor Pratinas, the Greek, who lives in an upper floor of a Subura house at only two thousand sesterces rental, find in these noble Roman lords only so much plunder.  Ha! ha!  Hellas, thou art avenged!”

  [29] A “fad” of this time.  Such tables often cost $20,000.

And gathering his mantle about him, he went down the several flights of very rickety stairs, and found himself in the buzzing street.

II

The Romans hugged a fond belief that houses shut out from sunlight and air were extremely healthy.  If such were the fact, there should have been no sickness in a great part of the capital.  The street in which Pratinas found himself was so dark, that he was fain to wait till his eyes accommodated themselves to the change.  The street was no wider than an alley, yet packed with booths and hucksters,—­sellers of boiled peas and hot sausage, and fifty other wares.  On the worthy Hellene pressed, while rough German