culous for any one's gravity;
and as the speech was repeated in other parts of the room, in spite of
their dulness and lassitude the whole Court laughed.

'I know not why I should be amused by that man's nonsense,' said
Camilla, suddenly becoming grave at the very crisis of a most
attractive smile, 'when I am so melancholy at the thought of Vetranio's
departure. What will become of me when he is gone? Alas! who will be
left in the palace to compose songs to my beauty and music for my lute?
Who will paint me as Venus, and tell me stories about the ancient
Egyptians and their cats? Who at the banquet will direct what dishes I
am to choose, and what I am to reject? Who?'--and poor little Camilla
stopped suddenly in her enumeration of the pleasures she was about to
lose, and seemed on the point of weeping as piteously as she had been
laughing rapturously but the instant before.

Vetranio was touched--not by the compliment to his more intellectual
powers, but by the admission of his convivial supremacy as a guide to
the banquet, contained in the latter part of Camilla's remonstrance.
The sex were then, as now, culpably deficient in gastronomic
enthusiasm. It was, therefore, a perfect triumph to have made a convert
to the science of the youngest and loveliest of the ladies of the Court.

'If she can gain leave of absence,' said the gratified senator,
'Camilla shall accompany me to Rome, and shall be present at the first
celebration of my recent discovery of a Nightingale Sauce.'

Camilla was in ecstasies. She seized Vetranio's cheeks between her
rosy little fingers, kissed him as enthusiastically as a child kisses a
new toy, and darted gaily off to prepare for her departure.

'Vetranio would be better employed,' sneered the Cynic, 'in inventing
new salves for future wounds than new sauces for future nightingales!
His carcase will be carved by Gothic swords as a feast for the worms
before his birds are spitted with Roman skewers as a feast for his
guests! Is this a time for cutting statues and concocting sauces? Fie
on the senators who abandon themselves to such pursuits as Vetranio's!'

'I have other designs,' replied the object of all this moral
indignation, looking with insulting indifference on the Cynic's
repulsive countenance, 'which, from their immense importance to the
world, must meet with universal approval. The labour that I have just
achieved forms one of a series of three projects which I have for so