ct tears by wine and
laughter while my hands are busy with the file and pumice-stone.
Before you know it, the billboards of the Sosii will announce the
completed work, and the dedication shall show Rome who is responsible
for my offending."

The look of anxious irritability faded from Maecenas's face, and in
restored serenity he walked with Horace from the dining-room,
through the spacious, unroofed peristyle, where marble pillars and
statues, flower-beds and fountains were blanched by the winter moon
to one tone of silver, and through the magnificent atrium, where the
images of noble ancestors kept their silent watch over the new
generation. At the vestibule door a porter, somewhat befuddled by
Saturnalian merry-making, was waiting sleepily. When he had opened
the door into the street the two friends stood silent a moment in
the outer portico, suddenly conscious, after the seclusion of the
great house and their evening's talk, of the city life
beyond,--hilarious, disordered, without subtlety in desire and
regret, rich in the common passions of humanity. At this moment a
troop of revelers stumbled past with wagging torches in their drunken
hands. Among them, conspicuous in the moonlight, the boy Propertius
swayed unsteadily, and pushed back a torn garland from his forehead.
Horace turned to Maecenas.

"Cynthia's wine," he said. "Do you expect to extract from the lees
an ode to Augustus?"

Maecenas shrugged his shoulders. "Probably," he said, "he will write
me a charming poem to explain why he cannot do what I ask. I know
the tricks of your tribe."

With a final laugh and a clasp of the hands the friends parted company.
Maecenas went back to his library to reread dispatches from Spain
before seeking his few hours of sleep. Horace, finding that the wind
had gone down, and tempted by the moonlight, turned toward the Subura
to stroll for another hour among the Saturnalian crowds.

III

Propertius made his way past the slave at his own door, who was
surprised only by his young master's arrival before daybreak, and
stumbled to his bedroom, where the night-lamp was burning. The
drinking at Cynthia's--he always thought of her by that name--had
been fast and furious. She had been more beautiful than he had ever
seen her. Her eyes had shone like stars, and the garlands had hung
down over her face and trailed in her cup of yellow wine. And she
had told him that he was the only true poet in Rome, and had read
his poems