"I saw your wife a couple of hours since.

Africa seems to suit her less well; I was shocked to see Julia, the handsome matron, so altered.

She does not look well." "Years are the foe of beauty." "Frequently they are, but true beauty often resists their attacks." "You are yourself the living proof of your assertion." "That is as much as to say that I am growing old." "Nay--only that you know the secret of remaining beautiful." "You are a poet!" murmured the Empress with a twitch of her thin under-lip.
"Affairs of state do not favor the Muses." "But I call any man a poet who sees things more beautiful than they are, or who gives them finer names than they deserve--a poet, a dreamer, a flatterer--for it comes to that." "Ah! modesty can always find words to repel even well-merited admiration." "Why this foolish bandying of words ?" sighed Sabina, flinging herself back in her chair.

"You have been to school under the hair-splitting logicians in the Museum here, and I have not.

Over there sits Favorinus, the sophist; I dare say he is proving to Ptolemaeus that the stars are mere specks of blood in our eyes, which we choose to believe are in the sky.