“But to-day you have been more silent than usual, and yet you seemed to me to be extraordinarily content.  Not your face only, but your whole length—­a good measure—­from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head was like a brimming cask of satisfaction.”

“Well, there is much that is lovely in this world!” cried Pollux, stretching himself comfortably and lifting his arms with his hands clasped far above his head towards heaven.

“Has anything specially pleasant happened to you?”

“There is no need for that!  Here I live in excellent company, the work progresses, and—­well, why should I deny it?  There was something specially to mark to-day; I met an old acquaintance again.”

“An old one?”

“I have already known her sixteen years; but when I first saw her she was in swaddling clothes.”

“Then this venerable damsel friend is more than sixteen, perhaps seventeen!  Is Eros the friend of the happy, or does happiness only follow in his train?” As the architect thoughtfully said these words to himself, Pollux listened attentively to a noise outside, and said: 

“Who can be passing out there at this hour?  Do you not hear the bark of a big dog mingle with the snapping of the three Graces?”

“It is Titianus conducting the architect from Rome,” replied Pontius excitedly.

“I will go to meet him.  But one thing more my friend, you too have an Alexandrian tongue.  Beware of laughing at the Emperor’s artistic efforts in the presence of this Roman.  I repeat it:  the man who is now coming is superior to us all, and there is nothing more repellant to me than when a small man assumes a strutting air of importance because he fancies he has discovered in some great man a weak spot where his own little body happens to be sound.  The artist I am expecting is a grand man, but the Emperor Hadrian is a grander.  Now retire behind your screens, and tomorrow morning I will be your guest.”

CHAPTER XI.

Pontius threw his pallium over the chiton he commonly wore at his work and went forward to meet the sovereign of the world, whose arrival had been announced to him in the prefect’s letter.  He was perfectly calm, and if his heart beat a little faster than usual, it was only because he was pleased once more to meet the wonderful man whose personality had made a deep impression on him before.

In the happy consciousness of having done all that lay in his power and of deserving no blame, he went through the ante-chambers and chief entrance of the palace into the fore-court, where a crowd of slaves were busied by torch-light in laying new marble slabs.  Neither these workmen nor their overseers had paid any heed to the barking of the dogs and the loud talking which had for some little time been audible in the vicinity of the gate-keeper’s lodge; for a special rate of payment had been promised to the laborers and their foremen if they should have finished a set piece of the new pavement by a certain hour, to the satisfaction of the architect.  No one who heard the deep man’s-voice ring through the court from the doorway guessed to whom it belonged.