He had never been unreasonable in his demands on life, nor slow in the contribution of his share.  It seemed only just that he should spend the years that were left to him as he chose.  People talked about his tossing off an ode as if he could do it at dessert, and spend the solid part of the day in other pursuits.  They little dreamed that the solid part of many days had often gone into one of his lyric trifles, and that Polyhymnia, she who had invented the lyre, and struck it herself in Lesbos, was among the most exacting of the Muses.  With the departure of his green youth and play-time had gone the inclination, as well as the courage, to set himself such tasks.  He had always been interested in reading the moral philosophers, and, whatever his friends said, he meant to keep to his books, and to write, if he wrote at all, in a comfortable, contemplative style.

Besides (so his irritated thoughts ran on), how could Florus expect a man who lived in Rome to write imaginative poetry?  How tiresome the days were there!  Whenever he went out, some one wanted his help in a dull business matter or dragged him off to a public reading by some equally dull author.  Even if he tried to visit his friends, one lived on the Quirinal and one on the Aventine, and the walk between lay through noisy streets filled with clumsy workmen, huge wagons, funeral processions, mad dogs, dirty pigs, and human bores.  No notes from the lyre could make themselves heard amid such confusion.

Suddenly his feeling quickened:  how good it was to be away just now in this autumnal season, when Rome laboured under leaden winds fraught with melancholy depression, and when his head always gave him trouble and he especially needed quiet and freedom!  The afternoon sun enveloped him in a delicious warmth, the shadows on the grass danced gayly, as a faint breeze stirred the branches above his head, the merry little stream near by seemed to prattle of endless content.

The frown above Horace’s eyes disappeared, and with it his inner annoyance.  Florus was a dear fellow, after all, and although he intended to write him a piece of his mind, he would do it in hexameters, more for his amusement than for his edification.  It would be a pretty task for the morning hours to-morrow.  Now he meant to be still, and forget his writing tablets altogether.  He was glad that his house was empty of guests, much as he had enjoyed the preceding week when a lively company had come over from Tibur, in whose retreat they were spending September, to hunt him out.  They had had charming dinners together, falling easily into conversations that were worth while, and by tacit consent forgetting the inanities of town gossip.  But at present he liked the quiet even better.  He had been walking about his little place more regularly, laughing at his steward who often grew impatient over the tiny crops, and assuring himself of the comfort of the few slaves who ran the farm.  And on more extended walks he had felt once more, as he had so often in these long years, the charm of the village people near him, with their friendly manners, their patient devotion to work, and their childlike enjoyment of country holidays.