Page:Poet Lore, volume 25, 1914.djvu/578

 He rubs his eyes).—My sweet little dove see, Gaius Valerius! Here, indeed, is a wife for you.

Catullus (with irony). She longed for you, consul. She was jealous of you. I did not know how to convince her that, overcome with the burden of the cares of state, you succumbed to sleep here. She demanded to see you, so I had to satisfy her—that perfect wife of yours.

Clodia (in a rage).—I shall remember this.

Metellus (rising. To ).—And the gossips were saying that you and she—Ha! Ha! I drink my wine unmixed, do I not, Gaius Valerius?

( is called then, and accompanied by is escorted to the house of her betrothed, .  appears and explains that it was all a mistake, that the real Greek slave girl had been found by him and was already at the house of .)

Metellus.—Well, at any rate, I had an excellent nap here—suppose we go home—dearest Clodia.

The indispensable hackneyed screen of French comedy is here, to be sure, but there is subtlety in the treatment which discloses a skilled hand. And there's an atmosphere in this bit of an act which relieves our conception of the heavy deus ex machina Cæsar and his times by the sketch of the young Cæsar, who is rapidly getting baldheaded, who flirts with Clodia’s slaves and sends her brother to spy on his own wife. And thundering Cicero falls asleep between cups of wine and political small talk. The self-same familiar touch prevails in his treatment of all heroes, be it Samson, Bar Kochba or Titiano Vecelli.

To-day, modern Bohemian literature is in a transitional period. The great poet Svatopluk Cech is dead—Vrchlicky is gone, and while there are minor dramatists and poets, whose work is perhaps about equal to that of Pinero or Henley, there are none whose fame would spread far beyond the limits of the crown lands of Saint Venceslas.