“I hate the idea of being conspicuous by my appearance,” answered Balbilla.  “It is precisely by following the fashion, however conspicuous it may be, that we are less remarkable than when we carefully dress far more simply and plainly—­in short, differently to what it prescribes.  Which do you regard as the vainer, the fashionably-dressed young gentleman on the Canopic way, or the cynical philosopher with his unkempt hair, his carefully-ragged cloak over his shoulders, and a heavy cudgel in his dirty hands?”

“The latter, certainly,” replied Pollux.  “Still he is sinning against the laws of beauty which I desire to win you over to, and which will survive every whim of fashion, as certainly as Homer’s Iliad will survive the ballad of a street-singer, who celebrates the last murder that excited the mob of this town.—­Am I the first artist who has attempted to represent your face?”

“No,” said Balbilla, with a laugh.  “Five Roman artists have already experimented on my head.”

“And did any one of their busts satisfy you?”

“Not one seemed to me better than utterly bad.”

“And your pretty face is to be handed down to posterity in five-fold deformity?”

“Ah! no—­I had them all destroyed.”

“That was very good of them!” cried Pollux, eagerly.  Then turning with a very simple gesture to the bust before him he said:  “Hapless clay, if the lovely lady whom thou art destined to resemble will not sacrifice the chaos of her curls, thy fate will undoubtedly be that of thy predecessors.”

The sleeping matron was roused by this speech.  “You were speaking,” she said, “of the broken busts of Balbilla?”

“Yes,” replied the poetess.

“And perhaps this one may follow them,” sighed Claudia.  “Do you know what lies before you in that case?”

“No, what?”

“This young lady knows something of your art.”

“I learnt to knead clay a little of Aristaeus,” interrupted Balbilla.

“Aha! because Caesar set the fashion, and in Rome it would have been conspicuous not to dabble in sculpture.”

“Perhaps.”

“And she tried to improve in every bust all that particularly displeased her,” continued Claudia.

“I only began the work for the slaves to finish,” Balbilla threw in, interrupting her companion.  “Indeed, my people became quite expert in the work of destruction.”

“Then my work may, at any rate, hope for a short agony and speedy death,” sighed Pollux.  “And it is true—­all that lives comes into the world with its end already preordained.”

“Would an early demise of your work pain you much?” asked Balbilla.

“Yes, if I thought it successful; not if I felt it to be a failure.”

“Any one who keeps a bad bust,” said Balbilla, “must feel fearful lest an undeservedly bad reputation is handed down to future generations.”

“Certainly! but how then can you find courage to expose yourself for the sixth time to a form of calumny that it is difficult to counteract?”