She was a zealous Christian, widow of a Roman senator; beloved of monks for her generous donations to monasteries, and abounding charity. At first she concealed her escapades, but soon perceived that to combine the love of the church with the love of the circus was quite the fashion.
Everybody knew that Stratonice detested the coxcombs of Constantinople, curled and painted, nervous and capricious as she was herself; it was her temperament and fancy to mingle the most costly perfumes of Arabia with the enervating heat of circus and stable. Hot tears of repentance, fervent confessions to tactful confessors, were of no avail; and this little woman, frail and delicate as some ivory trinket, cared for nothing but the coarse caresses of a certain famous circus-rider.
Stratonice was watching the exercises of the gymnast with a practised eye, while he, preserving a stupid expression on his beefy face, paid her not the slightest attention. She muttered something to her slave, with simple wonder admiring the powerful back and the terrible Herculean muscles rolling under the red skin of the shoulders, when, bending with deep inhalations, like the wind of a forge, he raised the iron weights above his handsome tawny head.
The curtain was lifted. The crowd of spectators recoiled, and two Cappadocian mares, a white and a black, pushed into the stables, ridden by a young horsewoman, who, with a guttural cry, adroitly leapt from one beast to another, and thence to the ground.
She was solidly-built, hale and sprightly as her mares, and upon her bare body shone fine drops of sweat.
Zephirinus, the elegant sub-deacon of the Basilica of the Holy Apostles, smilingly hastened towards her. A great lover of the circus, a frequenter of races and racing-stables, this young man would wager heavy sums for the blue (veneta) against the green (prasina). With his red-heeled morocco boots, his painted eyes, and curled hair, Zephirinus had much more the appearance of a young girl than of a servant of the church. Behind him stood a slave, burdened with packets of pretty stuffs and boxes, purchases of every kind from famous shops.
"Krokala, here are the perfumes you asked for the day before yesterday."
The sub-deacon offered the equestrienne a flask sealed with blue wax.
"I've been hunting in shops all the morning, and have only found it in one. It is pure nard, and arrived yesterday from Apamea!"
"And what purchases are these?" demanded Krokala.