iding. Balbilla was fond of lingering there, and as the morning of the
twenty-ninth of December was particularly brilliant--the sky and its
infinite mirror the sea, gleaming in indescribably deep blue, while the
fragrance of a flowering shrub was wafted in at her window like an
invitation to quit the house she had sought a certain bench which, though
placed in a sunny spot, was slightly shaded by an acacia. This seat was
screened from the more public paths by bushes; the promenaders who did
not seek Balbilla could not observe her here, but she could command a
view, through a gap in the foliage, of the path, which was strewn with
small shells.

To-day, however, the young poetess was far from feeling any curiosity;
instead of gazing at the shrubbery enlivened by birds, at the clear
atmosphere or the sparkling sea, her eyes were fixed on a yellow roll of
papyrus and she was impressing very dry details on her retentive memory.

She had determined to keep her word to learn to speak, write, and compose
verses in the Aeolian dialect of the Greek tongue. She had chosen for her
teacher Apollonius, the great grammarian, who was apt to call his
scholars "the dullards;" and the work which was the present object of her
studies was derived from the famous library of the Serapeum, which far
exceeded in completeness that of the Museum since the siege of Julius
Caesar in the Bruchiom, when the great Museum library was burnt.

Any one observing Balbilla at her occupation could hardly have believed
that she was studying. There was no fixed effort in her eyes or on her
brow; still, she read line for line, not skipping a single word; only she
did it not like a man who climbs a mountain with sweat on his brow, but
like a lounger who walks in the main street of some great city, and is
charmed at every new and strange thing that meets his eye. Each time she
came upon some form of structure in the book she was reading that had
been hitherto unknown to her, she was so delighted that she clapped her
hands and laughed out softly. Her learned master had never before met
with so cheerful a student, and it annoyed him, for to him science was a
serious matter while she seemed to make a joke of it, as she did of every
thing, and so desecrated it in his eyes. After she had been sitting an
hour on the bench, studying in her own way, she rolled up the book and
stood up to refresh herself a little. Feeling sure that no one could see
her, she stretched her