"Do you think that I could not acquire it and do so? To-morrow morning I will begin to practise myself in the old Aeolian forms."
"Let it alone," said Domitia Lucilla; "your simplest songs are always the prettiest."
"No one shall laugh at me!" declared Balbilla pertinaciously. "In a few weeks I will know how to use the Aeolian dialect, for I can do anything I am determined to do—anything, anything."
"What a stubborn little head we have under our curls!" exclaimed the
Empress, raising a graciously threatening finger.
"And what powers of apprehension," added Florus.
"Her master in language and metre told me his best pupil was a woman of noble family and a poetess besides—Balbilla in short."
The girl colored at the words, and said with pleased excitement:
"Are you flattering me or did Hephaestion really say that?"
"Woe is me!" cried the praetor, "for Hephaestion was my master too, and I am one of the masculine scholars beaten by Balbilla. But it is no news to me, for the Alexandrian himself told me the same thing as Florus."
"You follow Ovid and she Sappho," said Florus; "you write in Latin and she in Greek. Do you still always carry Ovid's love-poems about with you?"