onius glanced around to see that no slave was within hearing. Then
he smiled. "If I were a pagan, that is, if I had not been baptized, I
certainly should not be Prefect of Gaul. The dignity is probably worth
a few drops of water. They did not penetrate my skin. How could a poet
forget the old gods?"

"Yes, yes, if the learned mythological allusions should be effaced from
your verses, the brightest of the borrowed foreign feathers would be
plucked from Ausonius's raven."

"Tribune!" cried the nephew angrily,--he shouted much louder than was
necessary,--"you are speaking of the greatest Roman writer!"

"No, no," said the man thus lauded, very seriously, "there are probably
two or three greater ones."

"Forgive me, Ausonius," said Saturninus. "I understand battles, not
verses. Probably it is my own fault that yours don't suit me."

"You know too few of them," replied Herculanus reprovingly.

"I'm not of your opinion!" retorted the Illyrian, laughing. "I've never
had much time for reading. But I sometimes ride beside your uncle
through the olive woods of Aquitania, the vineyards of the Mosella, or
the marshy forests of the Alemanni: he has an inexhaustible memory and
can repeat his verses for miles."

"Yes," the poet assented complacently, "my memory must supply the place
of imagination."

"Wouldn't it be better if you had imagination, and your readers took
pleasure in remembering what it created?" asked the soldier.

"My uncle can repeat the whole of Virgil."

"Yes, that is evident--in his verses! The reader often doesn't know
where Virgil and Ovid end and Ausonius begins. But Ausonius prefers to
recite his own poetry."

The latter nodded pleasantly.

"That's the best thing about you. Prefect; though a little vain, like
all verse-writers, your heart is in the right place: a warm, kind heart
which never takes offence at a friend's jest."

"I should be both stupid and contemptible if I did that."

"As a reward I'll tell you now that I owe an exquisite night to one of
your poems--or a portion of it."

The poet, much pleased, raised himself on the lectus: "What poem?"

"Your 'Mosella.'"

"Yes, yes," replied Ausonius smiling, "I like it very much, too."

"It is divine!" Herculanus protested.

"I'm no theologian," said Saturninus, laughing, "to understand divine
things. But the most beautiful part of the poem is the description of
the various kinds of fish in the river."

"Yes, yes," observed the author,