The old lady was no longer alone, for in the background, on a long and narrow couch which stood in front of the statue of Apollo, lay a tall, lean man, wearing a red chiton.  A little lamp hanging from the ceiling threw a dull light on him and on the lute he was playing.  To the faint sound of the instrument, which was rather a large one, and which he had propped on the pillow by his side, he was singing, or rather murmuring a long ditty.  Twice, thrice, four times he repeated it in the same way.  Now and again he suddenly let his voice sound more loudly—­and though his hair was quite grey his voice was not unpleasing—­and sang a few phrases full of expression and with artistic delivery; and then, when the dogs barked too vehemently, he would spring up, and with his lute in his left-hand and a long pliable rattan in his right, he would rush into the court-yard, shout the names of the dogs, and raise his cane as if he would kill them; but he always took care not to hit them, only to beat on the pavement near them.  When, returning from such an excursion, he stretched himself again on his couch, the old woman, pointing to the hanging-lamp which the impatient creature often knocked with his head, would call out, “Euphorion, mind the oil.”

And he each time answered with the same threatening gesture and the same glare in his black eyes: 

“The little brutes!”

The singer had been diligently practising his musical exercises for about an hour, when the dogs rushed into the court-yard, not barking this time, but yelping loudly with joy.  The old woman laid aside the washing and listened, but the tall man said: 

“As many birds come flying before the Emperor as gulls before a storm.  If only they would leave us in peace—­”

“Hark, that is Pollux; I know by the dogs,” said the woman, hastening as fast as she could over the threshold and out to meet him.  But the expected visitor was already at the door.  He picked up the three four-footed Graces who leaped round him, one after the other by the skin of the neck, and gave each a tap on its nose.  Then, seeing the old woman, he took her head between his hands, and kissed her forehead, saying, “Good-evening, little Mother,” and shook hands with the singer, adding, “How are you, great, big Father?”

“You are as big as I am,” replied the man thus addressed, and he drew the younger man towards him, and laid one of his broad hands on his own grey head and the other on that of his first-born, with its wealth of brown hair.

“As if we were cast in the same mould,” cried the youth; and in fact he was very like his father—­like, no doubt, as a noble hunter is like a worn-out hack—­as marble is like limestone—­as a cedar is like a fir-tree.  Both were remarkably tall, had thick hair, dark eyes, and strongly aquiline noses, exactly of the same shape; but the cheerful brightness which irradiated the countenance of the youth had certainly not been inherited from the lute-player, but from the little woman who looked up into his face and patted his arm.