“But why is it not yours, my son Pontius?”

“Let me finish my speech.  I, as you know full well, do not care for gossip in the bath nor for reclining long over a banquet.  In the pauses of my work I am alone, with myself and with you, my very worthy Leukippe.  So the hours of rest are not for me the fairest scenes, but empty waits between the acts of the drama of life; and no reasonable man can find fault with me for trying to abridge them by useful occupation.”

“And what is the upshot of this sensible talk?  Simply this:  you must get married.”

Pontius sighed, but Leukippe added eagerly: 

“You have not far to look!  The most respectable fathers and mothers are running after you and would bring their prettiest daughters into your door.”

“A daughter whom I do not know, and who might perhaps spoil the pauses between the acts, which at present I can at any rate turn to some account.”

“They say,” the old woman went on, “that marriage is a cast of the dice.  One throws a high number, another a low one; one wins a wife who is a match for the busy bee, another gets a tiresome gnat.  No doubt there is some truth in it; but I have grown grey with my eyes open and I have often seen it happen, that how the marriage turned out depended on the husband.  A man like you makes a bee out of a gnat—­a bee that brings honey to the hive.  Of course a man must choose carefully.”

“How, pray?”

“First see the parents and then the child.  A girl who has grown up surrounded by good habits, in the house of a sensible father and a virtuous mother—­”

“And where in this city am I to find such a miracle?  Nay, nay, Leukippe, for the present all shall be left to my old woman.  We both do our duty, we are satisfied with each other and—­”

“And time is flying,” said the housekeeper, interrupting her master in his speech.  “You are nearly thirty-five years of age, and the girls—­”

“Let them be! let them be!  They will find other men!  Now send Cyrus with my shoes and cloak, and have my litter got ready, for Paulina has been kept waiting long enough.”

The way from the architect’s house to his sister’s was long, and on his way he found ample time for reflection on various matters besides Leukippe’s advice to marry.  Still, it was a woman’s face and form that possessed him heart and soul; at first, however, he did not feel inclined to feast his fancy on Balbilla’s image, lovely as it appeared to him; on the contrary, with self-inflicted severity he sought everything in her which could be thought to be opposed to the highest standard of feminine perfections.  Nor did he find it difficult to detect many defects and deficiencies in the Roman damsel; still he was forced to admit that they were quite inseparable from her character, and that she would no longer be what she was, if she were wholly free from them.  Each of her little weaknesses presently began to appear as an additional charm to the stern man who had himself been brought up in the doctrine of the Stoics.