in the train of Hera's bird was a graceful round curl, and that in the
middle of the circle there was a charming, intelligent girl's face, with
a merry little nose, and a rather too high forehead, and you will have
the portrait of the young damsel who has graciously permitted me to model
from her person."

Hadrian laughed heartily, threw off his cloak, and exclaimed:

"Stand aside--I know your maiden--and if I mean a different one you shall
tell me."

While he was still speaking he had plunged his powerful hands into the
yielding clay, and kneading and pinching like a practised modeller,
wiping off and pressing on, he formed a woman's face with a towering
structure of curls, which resembled Balbilla, but which reproduced every
conspicuous peculiarity with such whimsical exaggeration that Pollux
could not contain his delight. When at last Hadrian stepped back from
the happy caricature and called upon him to say whether that were not
indeed the Roman lady, Pollux exclaimed:

"It is as surely she, as you are not merely a great architect, but an
admirable sculptor. The thing is coarse, but unmistakably
characteristic."

The Emperor himself seemed to enjoy his artistic joke hugely, for he
looked at it, and laughed again and again. Pontius, however, seemed to
view it differently; he had listened with eager sympathy to the
conversation between Hadrian and the sculptor, and had watched the former
as he began his work; but as it went on he turned away, for he hated that
distortion of fine forms, which he often found that the Egyptians took a