th
a very simple gesture to the bust before him he said: "Hapless clay, if
the lovely lady whom thou art destined to resemble will not sacrifice
the chaos of her curls, thy fate will undoubtedly be that of thy
predecessors."

The sleeping matron was roused by this speech. "You were speaking," she
said, "of the broken busts of Balbilla?"

"Yes," replied the poetess.

"And perhaps this one may follow them," sighed Claudia. "Do you know
what lies before you in that case?"

"No, what?"

"This young lady knows something of your art."

"I learnt to knead clay a little of Aristaeus," interrupted Balbilla.

"Aha! because Caesar set the fashion, and in Rome it would have been
conspicuous not to dabble in sculpture."

"Perhaps."

"And she tried to improve in every bust all that particularly displeased
her," continued Claudia.

"I only began the work for the slaves to finish," Balbilla threw in,
interrupting her companion. "Indeed, my people became quite expert in
the work of destruction."

"Then my work may, at any rate, hope for a short agony and speedy
death," sighed Pollux. "And it is true--all that lives comes into the
world with its end already preordained."

"Would an early demise of your work pain you much?" asked Balbilla.

"Yes, if I thought it successful; not if I felt it to be a failure."

"Any one who keeps a bad bust," said Balbilla, "must feel fearful lest
an undeservedly bad reputation is handed down to future generations."

"Certainly! but how then can you find courage to expose yourself for the
sixth time to a form of calumny that it is difficult to counteract?"

"Because I can have anything destroyed that I choose," laughed the
spoilt girl. "Otherwise sitting still is not much to my taste."

"That is very true," sighed Claudia. "But from you I expect something
strikingly good."

"Thank you," said Pollux, "and I will take the utmost pains to complete
something that may correspond to my own expectations of what a marble
portrait ought to be, that deserves to be preserved to posterity."

"And those expectations require--?"

Pollux considered for a moment, and then he replied:

"I have not always the right words at my command, for all that I feel as
an artist. A plastic presentiment, to satisfy its creator, must fulfil
two conditions; first it must record for posterity in forms of eternal
resemblance all that lay in the nature of the person it represents;
secondly, it must also show to pos