“Well—­and what is there to be seen at Lochias?”

“Wonderful things,” answered Balbilla readily and clasping her little hands.

“A swarm of bees, a colony of ants, have taken possession of the palace.  Hands black, white and brown—­more than we could count, are busy there and of all the hundreds of workmen which are astir there, not one got in the way of another, for one little man orders and manages them all, just as the prescient wisdom of the gods guides the stars through the ‘gracious and merciful night’ so that they may never push or run against each other.”

“I must put in a word on behalf of Pontius the architect,” interposed Verus.  “He is a man of at least average height.”

“Let us admit it to satisfy your sense of justice,” returned Balbilla.  “Let us admit it—­a man of average height, with a papyrus-roll in his right-hand and a stylus in the left, controls them.  Now, does my way of stating it please you better?”

“It can never displease me,” answered the praetor.  “Let Balbilla go on with her story,” commanded the Empress.

“What we saw was chaos,” continued the girl, “still in the confusion we could divine the elements of an orderly creation in the future; nay, it was even visible to the eye.”

“And not unfrequently stumbled over with the foot,” laughed the praetor.  “If it had been dark, and if the laborers had been worms, we must have trodden half of them to death—­they swarmed so all over the pavement.”

“What were they doing?”

“Every thing,” answered Balbilla quickly.  “Some were polishing damaged pieces, others were laying new bits of mosaic in the empty places from which it had formerly been removed, and skilled artists were painting colored figures on smooth surfaces of plaster.  Every pillar and every statue was built round with a scaffolding reaching to the ceiling on which men were climbing and crowding each other just as the sailors climb into the enemy’s ships in the Naumachia.”

The girl’s pretty cheeks had flushed with her eager reminiscence of what she had seen, and, as she spoke, moving her hands with expressive gestures, the tall structure of curls which crowned her small head shook from side to side.

“Your description begins to be quite poetical,” said the Empress, interrupting her young companion.  “Perhaps the Muse may even inspire you with verse.”

“All the Pierides,” said the praetor, “are represented at Lochias.  We saw eight of them, but the ninth, that patroness of the arts, who protects the stargazer, the lofty Urania, has at present, in place of a head—­allow me to leave it to you to guess divine Sabina?”

“Well—­what?”

“A wisp of straw.”

“Alas,” sighed the Empress.  “What do you say, Florus?  Are there not among your learned and verse spinning associates certain men who resemble this Urania?”

“At any rate,” replied Florus, “we are more prudent than the goddess, for we conceal the contents of our heads in the hard nut of the skull, and under a more or less abundant thatch of hair.  Urania displays her straw openly.”