"Naturally," said Lisius Naepor, "since it is part of your nature from
before birth. Do you mean to tell us, Opsitius, that Hedulio has never
shown you his horoscope?"

"Never!" said Tanno, "and he never spoke of it to me. I'm Spanish, you
know, by ancestry, and Spaniards are not Syrians or Egyptians. Horoscopes
don't figure largely in Spanish life. I never bothered about horoscopes, I
suppose. So I never mentioned horoscopes to Hedulio nor he to me."

"Nor he to you of course," said Neponius Pomplio, "he is too modest."

"In fact," said Naepor. "I should never have known of Hedulio's horoscope
if his uncle had not shown me a copy. Caius has never mentioned it, unless
one of us talked of it first."

"What's the point of the horoscope?" Tanno queried.

"Why you see," Naepor explained. "Hedulio was born in the third watch of
the night on the Ides of September.

"Now it is well known that persons are likely to be competent trainers of
animals if they are born under the influence of the Whale or of the
Centaur or the Lion or the Scorpion or when the Lesser Bear rises at dawn
or in those watches of the night when the Great Bear, after swinging low
in the northern sky, is again beginning to swing upwards, or at those
hours of the day when, as it can be established by calculations, the Great
Bear, though invisible in the glow of the sunlight, is in that part of its
circle round the northern pole.