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."