"Oh, at Pyrmix's of course, near the baths. For what do you take me? You might make a long tarantinidion out of it. You can't imagine what embroidery there is on it! Guess the subject!"
"I don't know!... Flowers—animals?"
"In gold and silk—the whole story of Diogenes, the Cynic."
"Ah, that must be pretty!" cried the girl. "Come, by all means, I shall expect you."
Zephirinus glanced at the clepsydra, a water-clock placed in a niche in the wall.
"I am late—quite late! I must go on to a money-lender, a jeweller, then the patriarch, and then to the church. Till then, good-bye."
"Don't forget," Krokala cried to him, with a mischievous gesture.
The sub-deacon disappeared, followed by his slave.
A crowd of grooms, dancing girls, gymnasts, and tamers of wild beasts invaded the stables. With his face protected by a mask, the gladiator, Mermillion, was heating a bar of iron red-hot; he was taming a lion newly received from Africa, and which could be heard roaring through the stable-wall.
"You'll be the death of me, granddaughter, and you'll go to hell yourself! Oh, oh, how my back hurts! I'm done for!"