Directly over against the subterranean kitchen windows of a Phœnician dealer, ragged gamblers were playing at knuckle-bones, and gossiping. From the kitchen warm gusts of boiling gravy, game, and spices ascended, greedily snuffed-up, with closed eyes, by the hungry gamesters.
A certain Christian, a dyer of purple, dismissed for theft from a rich factory at Tyre, was murmuring, as he hungrily sucked a mallow-leaf thrown away by the cook,—
"And at Antioch, my friends, what's going on there makes one shiver at nights, just to think of it. Why, a few days ago the hungry folk tore in pieces the Prefect Theophilus—and for what reason? Nobody knows! When the thing was done they remembered too late that the poor wretch was a good sort of fellow and a respectable man. I suggested that perhaps the Emperor had pointed him out for punishment."
A consumptive old man, a very skilful cardsharper, replied—
"I have seen the Cæsar, and I like him. Quite young, fair as flax, with a good-natured, fat face. But, as you say, what crimes are committed nowadays! what crimes indeed! Why one can't put one's nose outside the door without danger."
"Ah, that's nothing to do with Cæsar! it's his wife, Constantia, the old witch, that does it!"
But strange personages came near the knot of talkers and thrust themselves forward, as if desiring to take part in the conversation.
If the kitchen firelight had been brighter, it would have been noticed that their faces were begrimed and their clothes fouled and torn like those of stage-beggars; and notwithstanding their raggedness the hands of these persons were fine and white, and their nails pared and crimsoned. One of them whispered in his comrade's ear—
"Listen, Agamemnon; here also they're talking about Cæsar."
He whom they called Agamemnon appeared to be drunk. He wore a beard, which was too thick and long to be natural, and gave him the aspect of a fantastic brigand. His eyes were debonair, almost boyish, and of a bright blue. His friends frequently pulled him back, muttering—