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The look of anxious irritability faded from Maecenas's face, and in restored serenity he walked with Horace from the dining-room, through the spacious, unroofed peristyle, where marble pillars and statues, flower-beds and fountains were blanched by the winter moon to one tone of silver, and through the magnificent atrium, where the images of noble ancestors kept their silent watch over the new generation.

He unquestionably belonged to Maecenas's following, but was not admitted into the inner circle of his intimates. Some have thought that the troublesome acquaintance who besought Horace to introduce him was no other than Propertius. The man, it will be remembered, expresses himself willing to take a humble place: "Haberes Magnum adiutorem posset qui ferre secundas Hunc hominem velles si tradere.

The Maecenas of the Tartars of Kazan chuckled; the Maecenas's guests laughed, but no one felt merry, and every one was in a bad temper when the party broke up.

Only last week Varius told me that he thinks Virgil himself is obsessed by the idea that he may die before he has finished his work, he has begged him so often to promise to destroy whatever is left uncompleted." A sudden sadness, like the shadow of familiar pain, fell upon Maecenas's face.

A gentleman from Siskyou sole proprietor of a mill patent now being considered by Maecenas had confined himself to a rocking-chair and clothes-horse as being trustworthy and familiar; a bolder spirit from Yreka in treaty for capital to start an independent journal devoted to Maecenas's interests had got a good deal out of, and indeed all he had INTO, a Louis XVI. armoire; while a young painter from Sacramento had simply retired into his adjoining bath-room, leaving the glories of his bedroom untarnished.

You may even ask me why I have not published my odes since you last saw me." Maecenas's eyes brightened with affectionate amusement. "Well, my friend," he said, "both money and glory would wing your flight. You have the public ear already, and can fix your own royalties with the Sosii. And everybody, from Augustus to the capricious fair, would welcome the published volume.

Dispeream ni Submosses omnes." And as Propertius speaks of himself as living on the Esquiliae, some have, in conformity with this view, imagined him to have held some domestic post under Maecenas's roof. A careful reader can detect in Propertius a far less well-bred tone than is apparent in Tibullus or Horace.

Davus had come in, and was laying the soft, thick folds of a long coat over his master's shoulders, as Maecenas's almost fretful appeal came to an end. Horace, accustomed to his friend's overstrained moods, and understanding the cure for them, turned toward him with a gentle respect which was free from all constraint or apology.

The fugitives took refuge in a villa that had belonged to Siro, and from this retreat, by the advice of his friend Cornelius Gallus, he removed to Rome, where, 37 B.C., he published his Eclogues. These at once raised him to eminence as the equal of Varius, though in a different department; but even before their publication he had established himself as an honoured member of Maecenas's circle.

Yet the visible architectural result, as here shown, was scarcely harmonious; indeed, some of his friends and Maecenas had many professed to classify the various improvements by the successive fortunate ventures in their owner's financial career, which had led to new additions, under the names, of "The Comstock Lode Period," "The Union Pacific Renaissance," "The Great Wheat Corner," and "Water Front Gable Style," a humorous trifling that did not, however, prevent a few who were artists from accepting Maecenas's liberal compensation for their services in giving shape to those ideas.