The poet bowed with an humble look, though secretly bursting with rage. The barber had interrupted his finest verses.
"What is it that disturbs me still?" groaned Carinus wrathfully. "Guess! Must I think instead of you? Something irritates, something vexes me! I should like to be angry."
"I have guessed it," said the barber. "These few hairs of your beard which disfigure your glorious face and insolently tickle your majestic nose and lips are annoying you. O Carinus, have them removed! Your face is so feminine in its beauty, and would be fairer still were it not injured by these ugly signs of manhood!"
"You may be right, Marcius," replied the youth, and allowed the hairs to be plucked out, which operation was performed by the barber with such skill that, at its close, the Cæsar appointed him prefect.
At the same moment a noise was heard outside the door. Several recognized the voice of old Mesembrius, who was trying to force his way into the imperial apartments.
Galga, the gigantic Thracian doorkeeper, held the old man back, and told him to come the next day. Carinus was asleep.
"This is the tenth time I have come here!" shouted the old man. "Once you said he was sleeping, again he was eating, the third time he was bathing, and the fourth he was not at leisure. But I will speak to him."
It cost Galga a hard struggle before he could force the aged Senator out of the atrium, and then it needed two or three slaves to push him through the door. Carinus was much pleased with Galga.
"Since you know how to guard my door so well, you deserve to be made Chancellor of Rome."
"And I? Do I deserve nothing, my lord?" asked Ævius in alarm.