“Flaccus, my Flaccus,” he exclaimed, “it is I who shall die, die before Virgil finishes his AEneid, or you your Odes.  My life will have been futile.  The Romans do not understand.  They want their standards back from the Parthians, they want the mines of Spain and the riches of Arabia.  They cast greedy eyes on Britain and make much ado about ruling Gaul and Asia and Greece and Egypt.  And they think that I am one of them.  But the Etruscan ghosts within me stir strangely at times, and walk abroad through the citadel of my soul.  Then I know that the idlest dream of a dreamer may have form when our civilisation shall have crumbled, and that the verse of a poet, even of this boy Propertius, will outlast the toil of my nights.  You and Virgil often tell me that you owe your fortunes to me,—­your lives, you sometimes say with generous exaggeration.  But I tell you that the day is coming when I shall owe my life to you, when, save for you, I shall be a mere name in the rotting archives of a forgotten state.  Why, then, do you delay to fulfill my hope?  Virgil at least is working.  What are you doing, my best of friends?”

Davus had come in, and was laying the soft, thick folds of a long coat over his master’s shoulders, as Maecenas’s almost fretful appeal came to an end.

Horace, accustomed to his friend’s overstrained moods, and understanding the cure for them, turned toward him with a gentle respect which was free from all constraint or apology.  His voice lost its frequent note of good-tempered mockery and became warm with feeling, as he answered:—­

“My friend, have patience.  You will not die, nor shall I, until I have laid before you a work worthy of your friendship.  You are indeed the honour and the glory of my life, and your faith in my lyric gift lifts me to the stars.  But you must remember that my Muse is wayward and my vein of genius not too rich.  No Hercules will reward my travail, so do not expect of me the birth-pangs that are torturing Virgil.  I have time to look abroad on life and to correct tears by wine and laughter while my hands are busy with the file and pumice-stone.  Before you know it, the billboards of the Sosii will announce the completed work, and the dedication shall show Rome who is responsible for my offending.”

The look of anxious irritability faded from Maecenas’s face, and in restored serenity he walked with Horace from the dining-room, through the spacious, unroofed peristyle, where marble pillars and statues, flower-beds and fountains were blanched by the winter moon to one tone of silver, and through the magnificent atrium, where the images of noble ancestors kept their silent watch over the new generation.  At the vestibule door a porter, somewhat befuddled by Saturnalian merry-making, was waiting sleepily.  When he had opened the door into the street the two friends stood silent a moment in the outer portico, suddenly conscious, after the seclusion of the great house and their evening’s talk, of the city life beyond,—­hilarious, disordered, without subtlety in desire and regret, rich in the common passions of humanity.  At this moment a troop of revelers stumbled past with wagging torches in their drunken hands.  Among them, conspicuous in the moonlight, the boy Propertius swayed unsteadily, and pushed back a torn garland from his forehead.  Horace turned to Maecenas.