But he was, as he always had been, as he remained, a booby.

I do not believe that there was any man in Rome I detested so heartily.
He greeted me as if he had a right to my notice and said: "I was told that Egnatius Capito was in this garden." "He was," I replied curtly, "but he has left it." "I certainly am disappointed," he said, seating himself by me, uninvited.
"I particularly wanted to speak to Capito at once." "You might find him at his house," I suggested.
But Bambilio was impervious to suggestions.
"I wanted to talk to him and you together," he said, "but that can be managed some other time." I was about to reply tartly, but I remembered how my irritation with Capito had affected me and recalled Galen's injunction that I must avoid all causes of excitement and emotion.

I held my peace.
Bambilio, as if he had been an intimate and had been specially invited, lolled comfortably on the bench and gazed approvingly about.
"Fine garden, Andivius," he said.

"Fine trees, fine flowers and I say, what a jewel of a slave-girl, eh! Hedulio!" I could have hit him, I was so incensed at his familiarity, I was already choking with internal rage at Agathemer for having let anyone in to talk to me in that garden, still more at his having done so without consulting me and most of all that after doing so he had not made sure that no one but Capito could pass the postern door.

But I almost exploded into voluble wrath when I looked where he indicated, saw a pretty, shapely young woman in the scanty attire of a slave-girl picking flag-flowers into a basket she carried, and recognized Vedia.