Marcus pronounced the last words solemnly, and then suddenly slipped a hand behind his back and his face beamed.
"Are you perspiring!" asked Garguillus.
"Yes!" answered Ausonius, with a rapturous smile. "Rub, slave, rub!"
He lay down on the couch. The bath-slave fell to kneading the poor anæmic limbs, which had a deadly bluish tint.
From their porphyry niches the figures of ancient time looked down with scorn through the milky smoke.
Meanwhile at the cross-roads, outside the baths, a crowd was collecting.
At night Antioch glittered with thousands of lights, especially along the Syngon, which ran through the city for a distance of twenty-six stadia, with porticoes and colonnades thronged with shops throughout its length.
In the crowd, pleasantries about the Emperor ran from mouth to mouth. Street boys rushed about from group to group shouting satirical ditties. An old woman caught one of the little vagabonds, and, lifting his shirt, administered sound correction with the sole of her sandal.
"Take that! and that! to teach you to sing such disgraceful things!"
The urchin uttered piercing squeals.