He was barely middle-aged, with regular, comely features, which a puffy face and pasty complexion marred considerably. His figure exhibited the same overload of fat, and, altogether, he presented the idea of a man, whose habits of life might more wisely have lain in the way of increased bodily exercise and Spartan fare. He used his hands very freely to accentuate his speech, but, more probably, because they were very small, plump, white, and soft.
‘Plautia’s message reached me in the midst of important business, but at the very moment of relief I came,’ he said, with a charming smile and wave of his white hand.
‘It is more than I deserved, so trifling are my requirements,’ replied Plautia. ‘I left the table last night somewhat early, and I am anxious to know whether I missed anything in the affair of that wonderful potter and his glass. See how interested I am, when I presume so far as to bring you hither at the sacrifice of your own affairs to enlighten me.’
‘Ah,’ replied Priscus, with a smirk, a bow, and a flash of his snowy fingers, ‘would to heaven your summons came oftener to bid me attend your presence. In the matter of the potter and his glass, which was, as you say, so highly remarkable, there followed a long discussion, of which, to my deep sorrow, I am utterly unable to give you a detailed account. I believe the fellow is still detained during Caesar’s pleasure, and the decided opinion last night was, that his new fashioned glass, if brought into general use, would sadly interfere with the more highly esteemed metals. So that, in case this opinion be retained, I should say the unlucky man will have small cause to rejoice in his invention.’
‘A very hard fate, no doubt, after his toil.’
‘Doubtless,’ said Priscus, shrugging his shoulders; ‘but it cannot be helped. If his invention be disadvantageous, Caesar must interdict it in the interest of all.’
‘Naturally! And so, noble Priscus, let me thank you for your courtesy. I am sorry to think the poor man will be no gainer—he seemed so intelligent, I was quite interested.’
‘Undoubtedly above the standard of his class.’
‘He seems, moreover, to be tolerably well known,’ uttered Plautia, with a careless yawn. ‘Somebody about me—I know not who—told me he possessed a daughter at home, a girl of surpassing loveliness.’
‘Ah, indeed!’ said the knight, with the slightest wrinkle of his brows. ‘Now, to my humble taste, that would be infinitely more interesting than the child of his genius—a glass bowl. But yet to speak of surpassing loveliness when the beauteous Plautia is not excepted is absurd.’