I took my way over the Palatine, desiring to see the excellent Tacitus, whose house is there. He was absent, being suddenly called to Baiæ. I turned toward the Forum, wishing to perform a commission for Julia at the shop of Civilis—still alive, and still compounding his sweets—which is now about midway between the slope of the hill and the Forum, having been removed from its former place where you knew it, under the eaves of the Temple of Peace. The little man of 'smells' was at his post, more crooked than ever, but none the less exquisitely arrayed; his wig befitting a young Bacchus, rather than a dried shred of a man beyond his seventieth year. All the gems of the east glittered on his thin fingers, and diamonds, that might move the envy of Livia, hung from his ears. The gales of Arabia, burdened with the fragrance of every flower of that sunny clime, seemed concentrated into an atmosphere around him; and, in truth, I suppose a specimen of every pot and phial of his vast shop, might be found upon his person concealed in gold boxes, or hanging in the merest fragments of bottles upon chains of silver or gold, or deposited in folds of his ample robes. He was odor in substantial form. He saluted me with a grace, of which he only in Rome is master, and with a deference that could not have been exceeded had I been Aurelian. I told him that I wished to procure a perfume of Egyptian origin and name, called Cleopatra's tears, which was reputed to convey to the organs of smell, an odor more exquisite than that of the rarest Persian rose, or choicest gums of Arabia. The eyes of Civilis kindled with the fires of twenty—when love's anxious brow is suddenly cleared up by that little, but all comprehensive word, yes—as he answered,

'Noble Piso, I honor you. I never doubted your taste. It is seen in your palace, in your dress, nay, in the very costume of your incomparable slave, who has done me the honor to call here in your service. But now have you given of it the last and highest proof. Never has the wit of man before compounded an essence like that which lies buried in this porphyry vase.'

'You do not mean that I am to take away a vase of that size? I do not purchase essences by the pound!'

Civilis seemed as if he would have fainted, so oppressed was he by this display of ignorance. My character, I found, was annihilated in a moment. When his presence of mind was recovered, he said,

'This vase? Great Jupiter! The price of your palace upon the Cœlian would scarce purchase it! Were its contents suddenly let loose, and spilled upon the air, not Rome only, but Italy, would be bathed in the transporting, life-giving fragrance! Now I shall remove the cover, first giving you to know, that within this larger vase there is a number of smallest bottles, some of glass, others of gold, in each of which are contained a few of the tears, and which are warranted to retain their potency, and lend their celestial peculiarity to your clothes or your apartments, without loss or diminution in the least appreciable degree, during the life of the purchaser. Now, if it please you, bend this way, and receive the air which I shall presently set free. How think you, noble Piso? Art not a new man?

'I am new in my knowledge such as it is Civilis. It is certainly agreeable, most agreeable.'

'Agreeable! So is mount Etna a pretty hill! So is Aurelian a fair soldier! so is the sun a good sized brazier! I beseech thee, find another word. Let it not go forth to all Rome, that the most noble Piso deems the tears of Cleopatra agreeable!'

'I can think no otherwise,' I replied. 'It is really agreeable, and reminds me, more than anything else, of the oldest Falernian, just rubbed between the palms of the hand, which you will allow is to compliment it in no moderate measure. But confess now, Civilis, that you have an hundred perfumes more delicious than this.'

'Piso, I may say this,—they have been so.'

'Ah, I understand you; you admit then, that it is the force of fashion that lends this extraordinary odor to the porphyry vase.'