"If the bust is successful I will take him with me to Rome." "I will sit to him with pleasure," said the girl.

"The bright young fellow took my fancy." "And Balbilla his," added the praetor's wife; "he gazed at her as a marvel, and she promised him that, with your permission, she would place her face at his disposal for three hours to-morrow." "He begins with the head," interposed Verus.

"What a happy man is an artist such as he! He may turn about her head, or lay her peplum in folds without reproof or repulse, and to-day when we had to get past bogs of plaster, and lakes of wet paint, she scarcely picked up the hem of her dress, and never once allowed me--who would so willingly have supported her--to lift her over the worst places." Balbilla reddened and said angrily: "Really Verus, in good earnest, I will not allow you to speak to me in that way, so now you know it once for all; I have so little liking for what is not clean that I find it quite easy to avoid it without assistance." "You are too severe," interrupted the Empress with a hideous smile.

"Do not you think Domitia Lucilla, that she ought to allow your husband to be of service to her ?" "If the Empress thinks it right and fitting," replied the lady raising her shoulders, and with an expressive movement of her hands.

Sabina quite took her meaning, and suppressing another yawn she said angrily: "In these days we must be indulgent toward a husband who has chosen Ovid's amatory poems as his faithful companion.