the little hammer into the leather belt which fastened the skin apron over his blue tunic, shook from a little oil-flask a few drops on a woollen cloth, rubbed therewith the marble till it was smooth as a mirror, turned his head aside, as a bird will that wishes to look closely at anything, and then, nodding well pleased, read from the slab at the entrance:

"Yes, yes! here dwells happiness; my happiness, our happiness: so long as my Felicitas dwells here--happy and making happy. May misfortune never step over this threshold: banished by the adage, may every bad spirit Halt! Now is the house beautifully finished by this inscription. But where is she, then? She must see it and praise me. Felicitas," cried he, turning towards the house, "come then!"

He wiped the sweat from his brow, and stood upright--a supple, youthful form, slender, not above the middle height, not unlike the Mercury of the garden, whose proportions Crispus had formed according to old tradition; dark-brown hair, in short curls, covered almost like a cap his round head; under large eyebrows, two dark eyes laughed pleasantly on the world; the naked feet and arms showed a fine shape, but little strength; only in the right arm powerful muscles raised themselves; the brown skin apron was sprinkled white with marble dust, he shook it off, and cried again louder, "Felicitas!"

Then appeared on the threshold of the house a white figure, who, drawing back the dark-yellow curtain, which was fastened to rings running on a bronze rod, was framed like a picture in the two pilasters of the entrance--a quite young girl--or was it a young wife? Yes, she must be already a wife, this child of hardly seventeen years, for she is without doubt the mother of the infant which, with her left arm, she nestles to her bosom: only the mother holds a child with such expression in the movements and countenance. Two fingers of the right hand, the inner surface turned outwards, the young mother laid on her lips: "Be quiet!" said she, "our child sleeps." And now the hardly full-ripe form glided down the four stone steps which led from the house into the garden, with the left arm carefully raising the child higher and pressing it closer, with the right gently lifting the hem of her plaited robe as high as her well-formed ankles. It was a spectacle of perfect grace: young and childlike, like Raphael's Madonna, but not humble and at the same time mystically glorious, as the mother of the Christ-child; there was nothing incomprehensible, nothing miraculous, only a noble simplicity and yet royal loftiness in her unconscious dignity and innocence. There floated, as it were, a sweet-sounding music round the figure of this Hebe, every movement being in perfect harmony; wife and yet maiden; entirely human, perfectly at rest and contented in the love of her young husband and of the child at her breast. Lovely, touching, and dignified at the same time, in all the perfect beauty of her figure, her face and her complexion so modest, that in her presence, as before a beautiful statue, every wish was silent.

She wore no ornament; her light-brown hair, shining with a golden lustre when the sun kissed it, flowed back in natural waves from the open, well-formed temples, leaving the rather low forehead free, and was fastened at her neck in a loose knot. A milk-white robe of the finest wool, fastened on the left shoulder with a beautifully shaped, but simple silver brooch, hung in folds down to her ankles, showing the pretty red leather sandals; leaving bare the neck and arms, which were still childlike, but rather too long. The robe was fastened at the waist with a wide bronze girdle.

Thus she moved silently down the steps, and approached her husband. The long narrow face had that wonderful, almost bluish-white, complexion only possessed by the daughters of Ionia, and which no noon-tide sun of the south can embrown; the eye-brows, in a half-circle, regular as if drawn with compasses, might have given to the countenance a lifeless, statuesque appearance, but under the long, slightly curved, black eye-lashes, the dark-brown gazelle-like eyes, now directed towards her beloved, shone with a life full of feeling.

He flew towards her with an elastic step, lifted carefully, tenderly, the sleeping child from her arm, and taking the flat straw lid from his tool-basket, he placed the child on it, under the shade of a rose-bush. The evening breeze threw the scented leaves of a full-blown rose on the little one: he smiled in his sleep.

Then the master, winding his arm round the waist of his young wife, led her to the just completed entrance-slab, and said:

"Now is the proverb ready, which I have kept hidden from thee till I could finish it; now read, and know, and feel"--and he kissed her tenderly on the mouth: "Thou--thou thyself art the happiness; Thou dwellest here."

The young wife held her hand before her eyes to protect them from the sun, which now shone in almost horizontal beams through the open gateway; she read and blushed, the colour rose perceptibly in her delicate white cheeks, her bosom heaved, her heart beat quickly: "O Fulvius! thou art good. How thou dost love me! How happy we are!" And she laid her two hands and arms on his right shoulder, on the other her beautiful head.

He heartily pressed her to himself. "Yes, overflowing, without shadow is our happiness--without measure or end."

Quickly, with a slight trembling, as if shivering, she raised herself, and looked him anxiously in the face: "O, do not provoke the holy ones. It is whispered," said she, herself whispering, "they are envious." And she held her hand before his mouth.

But he pressed a loud kiss upon the small fingers, and cried: "I am not jealous, I, a man--why should the holy ones be envious? I do not believe that. I do not believe it of the holy ones--nor of the heathen gods, if indeed they still have life and power."

"Speak not of them! They certainly live!--but they are bad spirits, and he who names them, he calls them near; thus warns the Presbyter of the Basilica."

"I fear them not. They have protected our ancestors for many generations."

"Yes, but we have turned away from them! They defend us no longer. Only the saints are our defenders against the barbarians. Alas! if they came here, trampled down the flowers in the garden, and carried away our child."

And she knelt down and kissed the little sleeper.

But the young father laughed. "The Germans, dost thou mean? they steal no children! They have more than they can feed. But it is true----they may perhaps one day sound out their war-cry before the gates of Juvavum."

"Yes, that they may, very soon!" broke in an anxious voice, and the fat Crispus, breathing heavily after his hot walk, entered the garden.

"Ave, Phidias in plaster," cried Fulvius to him.

"Welcome, uncle," said Felicitas, giving him her hand.

The broad-brimmed felt hat which he had drawn over his brow to protect his red, fat, shining, good-humoured face, and his stump nose, from the sun, Crispus threw on his neck, so that it hung by the leather strap on his broad back. "May Hygeia never leave thee, my daughter; the Graces never forsake thee, their fourth sister. Yes, the Germans! A horseman came last night with secret information for the Tribune. But two hours after we knew it all, we, early guests at the Baths of Amphitrite. The rider is a Wascon; no Wascon keeps his mouth closed if you pour wine therein. A battle has been fought at the ford of the Isar: our troops have fled, the watch-tower of Vada is burnt. The barbarians have crossed the river."

"Bah!" laughed Fulvius, "that is yet far away. Go, darling, prepare a cooling drink for