She felt herself the richer by a painful experience, indignant, and offended.  Accustomed as she was to give prompt utterance even to her displeasure, she exclaimed hotly, and with tears in her eyes: 

“It is shameful, it is base.  Give me my wraps Claudia.  I will not stay an instant longer to be the butt of this man’s coarse and spiteful jesting.”

“It is unworthy,” cried the matron, “so to insult a person of your position.  It is to be hoped our litters are waiting outside.”

Pontius had overheard Balbilla’s last words.  He had come into the work-place without Pollux, who was still speaking to the prefect, and he said gravely as he approached Balbilla: 

“You have every reason to be angry, noble lady.  This thing is an insult in clay, malicious, and at the same time coarse in every detail; but it was not Pollux who did it, and it is not right to condemn without a trial.”

“You take your friend’s part!” exclaimed Balbilla.  “I would not tell a lie for my own brother.”

“You know how to give your words the aspect of an honorable meaning in serious matters, as he does in jest.”

“You are angry and unaccustomed to bridle your tongue,” replied the architect.  “Pollux, I repeat it, did not perpetrate the caricature, but a sculptor from Rome.”

“Which of them?  I know them all.”

“I may not name him.”

“There—­you see.—­Come away Claudia.”

“Stay,” said Pontius, decisively.  “If you were any one but yourself, I would let you go at once in your anger, and with the double charge on your conscience of doing an injustice to two well-meaning men.  But as you are the granddaughter of Claudius Balbillus, I feel it to be due to myself to say, that if Pollux had really made this monstrous bust he would not be in this palace now, for I should have turned him out and thrown the horrid object after him.  You look surprised—­you do not know who I am that can address you so.”

“Yes, yes,” cried Balbilla, much mollified, for she felt assured that the man who stood before her, as unflinching as if he were cast in bronze, and with an earnest frown, was speaking the truth, and that he must have some right to speak to her with such unwonted decision.  “Yes indeed, you are the principal architect of the city; Titianus, from whom we have heard of you, has told us great things of you; but how am I to account for your special interest in me?”

“It is my duty to serve you—­if necessary, even with my life.”

“You,” said Balbilla, puzzled.  “But I never saw you till yesterday.”

“And yet you may freely dispose of all that I have and am, for my grandfather was your grandfather’s slave.”

“I did not know”—­said Balbilla, with increasing confusion.

“Is it possible that your noble grandfather’s instructor, the venerable Sophinus, is altogether forgotten.  Sophinus, whom your grandfather freed, and who continued to teach your father also.”