Directly after, Ausonius and Saturninus entered the Praefectorian tent
from the _Via Principalis_, while Herculanus, coming from the rear,
passed in with them. The host shared his seat on the couch with his two
guests.
He was a man of fifty-two, but his stately figure showed few signs of
approaching age, and his noble face lacked none of the characteristics
of the patrician Roman in the modelling of the forehead, nose, and
finely arched brows.
But the mouth had smiled so often--probably far too often in self
complacency--that it had forgotten how to close with firm decision; it
was much too weak for a man. And the light-brown eyes, so pleasant and
kindly, so content with everything and everybody--and not least with
Ausonius--betrayed more plainly than any other feature the approach of
age; their glance had lost the fire of youth. They seemed weary, not of
life but of reading; for Ausonius had been professor, rhetorician,
tutor of princes, and poet. In those days that meant a man who read an
immense amount and, in default of elevating thoughts of his own,
extracted with the industry of a bee the ideas of the writers of four
centuries, tore them asunder, and put them together again in such tiny
fragments that his readers and himself believed them to be new ones of
his own and would have found it very difficult to separate the mosaic
into its borrowed portions. Passions had never furrowed this smooth
face: the lines around the eyes were not graven by pain, but by the
passage of the years.
This kindly natured man, who himself saw everything on its best side,
thought the whole world most admirably arranged. He believed seriously
that all men who had not committed great crimes, and therefore deserved
punishment, fared just as well as the very, very wealthy, benevolent,
and much praised Decimus Magnus Ausonius of Burdigala (Bordeaux), the
delightful city of villas; that they fared as well as Ausonius, who was
petted by all who surrounded him, and who in the opinion of his
contemporaries--and especially his own--was the greatest poet of his
age. Even had this been true, it certainly would not have meant much.
This really amiable, kindly man, whose only fault was a little undue
self-satisfaction, was now playing the part which best suited him,--far
better than that of poet or statesman,--the part of the host who,
comfortable himself, desires to make all his guests equally so. His
pleasant, cheery, friendly kindness of heart, which would fain see
everybody happy, though of course without too much self-sacrifice,
found in this _role_ its fullest expression.
"There! now go, slaves." He waved his hand to those who had again
entered. "Look after yourselves--as we are doing. Go, too, my faithful
Prosper: take for yourself--and give to the others--the better wine
from Rhodanus; you know it. I saw how hard it was to drag the skins up
the steep hill. Go: we will serve ourselves." He stretched himself
comfortably on the lectus, thrusting under his head a soft downy pillow
filled with the feathers of German geese. "Give yonder amethyst goblet
to the Tribune, my dear nephew, for our Illyrian Hercules must drink
deeply! No, Saturninus, don't take the mixing vessel! The first
cup--unmixed. To the genius of the Emperor Gratianus!"
"It's lucky that the Emperor himself doesn't hear you," cried the
Tribune, laughing, as he put down the empty goblet. "I am neither
Christian nor pagan, only a soldier, and nobody asks about my faith.
But you! Gratianus's teacher! The Emperor is zealous in the true
religion. And you drink to his genius, as though we were living in the
reign of Diocletian! Are you a pagan, Prefect of Gaul?"
Ausonius 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, smiling as he slowly sipped his wine,
"verses eighty-two to one hundred and forty-nine: they are very pretty,
especially the euphony."
"Oh, never mind the euphony. I read it in the evening, and fell
asleep."
"Barbarian!" exclaimed the poet. "But in my dreams I saw before me the
most delicious fish; the salm--"
"'Thee, too, I praise, O salmon, with thy roseate flesh!'"
Ausonius quoted.
"The trout."
"'Then the trout, its back besprinkled with tiny crimson
stars.'
"That's what I call a fine line."
"The grayling."
"'And the swift grayling, escaping from the eye with
rapid leaps!'"
"Yes, but not as you describe them, alive in the Mosella--there is
nothing I enjoy eating more than a fine fish! No, I saw them before me
on silver dishes, baked, broiled, and in dainty stews; and in my dream
I tasted them all. When I woke, I licked my lips and blessed Ausonius:
no poet has ever given me so much pleasure."
He laughed and drained his goblet.