“At least, having no sons,” he went on, “I shall be spared some of his disappointments.  It was cruel that my brother, who could have satisfied him by going into public life, should have died.  Father had no use for literature.  He used to point out to me that not even Homer made money, so what could I expect?  But I believe that even he saw that my student speeches sounded like metreless verse, and later on he accepted the bad bargain with some grace.  He had sniffed at what I considered my youthful successes.  I was immensely proud over seeing Virgil once in the same room as myself, and when I came to know Horace and Propertius fairly intimately I felt myself quite a figure in Rome.  But father had little or no respect for them—­except when Horace turned preacher—­and no patience at all with what I wrote.  Before he died, however, when these greater men had passed off the stage and he saw young men look up to me as I had looked up to them, and found I could sell my wares, he began to grant that I had, after all, done something with my time.”

“I never can realise,” Perilla exclaimed, “that you are old enough to have seen Virgil!  Why, I wasn’t even born when he died!  I suppose those times, when Augustus was young, were very fiery and inspiring, but I am so glad I live in this very year.  I would rather have you the chief poet of Rome than a hundred solemn Virgils, and surely life can never have been as lovely as it is now.  Isn’t Rome much finer and more finished?”

Fidus smiled.  “You are your father’s own child,” he said.  “We certainly are getting the rustic accent out of our mouths and the rustic scruples out of our morals.  In the meantime”—­he added lightly—­“some of us have to plod along with our old habits, or where would the Empire be?  I don’t expect to improve much on the proconsulship of my father.”

Ovid’s eyes rested whimsically on the young man, and after a pause he said:  “Art is one thing and conduct is another.  I trust Perilla to you but with no firmer assurance of her happiness than I have of Fabia’s entrusted to me.  Soldiering and proconsuling have their place, but so has the service of the Muses.  While you are looking after taxes in Africa, we will make Rome a place to come back to from the ends of the earth.  After all, to live is the object of life, and where can you live more richly, more exquisitely than here?  You will find you cannot stay away long.  Rome is the breath we breathe.  I like to believe that will prove true of you.  I cannot give up Perilla long, even with this young Roman as a hostage.”  The child had fallen asleep, and with a light kiss on his tousled curls the grandfather turned him over to his mother’s arms.  “Let us leave these connoisseurs to discuss his dimples,” he said to his son-in-law, “drag our other boy out of his bee-hives and have one more game of ball before I get too old.”