...., the girl seated at a table facing the wall was working away, the painter had apparently left, promising to return tomorrow with an outline design of the fresco. He told Lurcio to pay the girl and find out where she was staying, should he decide to employ her.

He exited onto the hub-bub of the street and turned towards the Via Dell'Abbondanza. He weaved his way past the myriad of cauponae, tonsors, teachers, butchers, grocers and other shops displaying and spilling out onto to the pavement their wares of wicker baskets, pottery, oil lamps, mirrors and perfumes. He normally wouldn't countenance the cold-calling artisan but the subject of Aeneas and Venus had struck a cord, being one of his favourite passages of Virgil:

'Under the trees his mother met him.
She had a maiden's countenance and a maiden's guise,
And carried a maiden's weapons, like some Spartan girl,
Or like Harpalyce the Thracian who outruns horses
Till they tire and outstrips even the the winged river Hebrus,
Slung ready on her shoulder she carried a bow as a huntress would,
And she had let her hair stream in the wind;
Her tunic's folds were caught up and tied, and her knees were bare.'

He liked the idea of the female as the huntress, well as it is often said, does not a man chase a woman until she catches him?