"Yes."
"Marco, where can the gentleman find an agent of the municipal prefect?"
"I don't know," said Marco.
The bead-seller shrugged. "Sorry, I don't know either." If this were twentieth-century Rome, there would be no difficulty about finding a cop. And not even Benny the Moose could make a whole city change its language. So he must be in (a) a movie set, (b) ancient Rome (the Tancredi hypothesis), or (c) a figment of his imagination.
He started walking. Talking was too much of a strain. It was not long before any lingering hopes about a movie set were dashed by the discovery that this alleged ancient city stretched for miles in all directions, and that its street plan was quite different from that of modern Rome. Padway found his little pocket map nearly useless.
The signs on the shops were in intelligible Classical Latin. The spelling had remained as in Caesar's time, if the pronunciation had not.
The streets were narrow, and for the most part not very crowded. The town had a drowsy, shabby-genteel, run-down personality, like that of Philadelphia.
At one relatively busy intersection Padway watched a man on a horse direct traffic. He would hold up a hand to stop an oxcart, and beckon a sedan chair across. The man wore a gaudily striped shirt and leather trousers. He looked like a central or northern European rather than an Italian.
Padway leaned against a wall, listening. A man would say a sentence just too fast for him to catch. It was like having your hook nibbled but never taken. By terrific concentration, Padway forced himself to think in Latin. He mixed his cases and numbers, but as long as he confined himself to simple sentences he did not have too much trouble with vocabulary.
A couple of small boys were watching him. When he looked at them they giggled and raced off.