"And as sure as you are descended from King Antiochus," added Verus bowing.
"Always the same," laughed the prefect, nodding to the audacious jester.
"Sabina wants to speak to you."
"Directly, directly," said Verus. "My story is a true one, and you all ought to be grateful to me for having released you from that tedious philologer who has now button-holed my witty friend Favorinus. I like your Alexandria, Titianus; still it is not a great capital like Rome. The people have not yet learned not to be astonished; they are perpetually in amazement. When I go out driving—"
"Your runners ought to fly before you with roses in their hair and wings on their shoulders like Cupids."
"In honor of the Alexandrian ladies?"
"As if the Roman ladies in Rome, and the fair Greeks at Athens," interrupted Balbilla.
"The praetor's runners go faster than Parthian horses," cried the
Empress's chamberlain. "He has named them after the winds."
"As they deserve," added Verus "Come, Titianus." He laid his hand in a confidential manner on the arm of the prefect, to whom he was related; and as they went towards Sabina he whispered in his ear:
"I can keep her waiting as if I were the Emperor."