Lygia, standing opposite, with raised arms was trying to catch. The
maiden did not make a great impression on Petronius at the first glance;
she seemed to him too slender. But from the moment when he saw her more
nearly in the triclinium he thought to himself that Aurora might look
like her; and as a judge he understood that in her there was something
uncommon. He considered everything and estimated everything; hence her
face, rosy and clear, her fresh lips, as if set for a kiss, her eyes
blue as the azure of the sea, the alabaster whiteness of her forehead,
the wealth of her dark hair, with the reflection of amber or Corinthian
bronze gleaming in its folds, her slender neck, the divine slope of her
shoulders, the whole posture, flexible, slender, young with the youth of
May and of freshly opened flowers. The artist was roused in him, and
the worshipper of beauty, who felt that beneath a statue of that maiden
one might write "Spring." All at once he remembered Chrysothemis, and
pure laughter seized him. Chrysothemis seemed to him, with golden powder
on her hair and darkened brows, to be fabulously faded,--something in
the nature of a yellowed rose-tree shedding its leaves. But still Rome
envied him that Chrysothemis. Then he recalled Poppæa; and that most
famous Poppæa also seemed to him soulless, a waxen mask. In that maiden
with Tanagrian outlines there was not only spring, but a radiant soul,
which shone through her rosy body as a flame through a lamp.

"Vinicius is right," thought he, "and my Chrysothemis is old, old!--as
Troy!"

Then he turned to Pomponia Græcina, and, pointing to the garden, said,--
"I understand now, domina, why thou and thy husband prefer this house to
the Circus and to feasts on the Palatine."

"Yes," answered she, turning her eyes in the direction of little Aulus