urned home to make
arrangements for the labors of the following day.

It wanted only an hour of midnight, and still the supper sent to the
palace for the architect by the prefect remained untouched. Pontius was
hungry enough, but before attacking the meal that a slave had set out on
a marble table--the roast meat which looked so inviting, the orange-red
crayfish, the golden-brown pasty and the many-hued fruits--he conceived
it his duty to inspect the rooms to be restored. It was needful to see
whether the slaves who had been set, in the first place to clean out all
the rooms, were being intelligently directed by the men set over them,
whether they were doing their duty and had all that they required; they
had got some hours to work, then they were to rest and to begin again at
sunrise, reinforced by other laborers both slave and free.

More and better lighting was universally demanded, and when, in the hall
of the Muses, the men who were cleaning the pavement and scraping the
columns loudly clamored for torches and lamps, a young man's head peered
over the screen which shut in the place reserved for the restoration of
the Urania, and a lamentable voice cried out:

"My Muse, with her celestial sphere, is the guardian of star-gazers and
is happiest in the dark--but not till she is finished. To form her we
must have light and more light--and when it is lighter here the voice of
the people down there, which does not sound very delightful up in this
hollow space, will diminish somewhat also. Give light, then, O, men!
Light for my goddess, and for your scrubbers and scourers."

Pontius looked up smiling at Pollux, who had uttered this appeal, and
answered:

Your cry of distress is fully justified, my friend. But do you really
believe in the power of light to diminish noise?"

"At any rate," replied Pollux, "where it is absent, that is to say in the
dark, every noise seems redoubled."

"That is true, but there are other reasons for that," answered the
architect. "To-morrow in an interval of work we will discuss these
matters. Now I will go to provide you with lamps and lights."

"Urania, the protectress of the fine arts, will be beholden to you,"
cried Pollux as the architect went away.

Pontius meanwhile sought his chief foreman to ask him whether he had
delivered his orders to Keraunus, the palace-steward, to come to him, and
to put the cressets and lamps commonly used for the external
illuminations, at the service