It was Theodora, the Empress. A seductive apparition.
All the arts of woman's inventive genius in a time of refined luxury, and all the means of an empire, were daily called into requisition, in order to keep the beauty of this woman--who had impaired it only too much by a life of unbridled sensuality--fresh and dazzling. Gold-dust gave to her blue-black hair a metallic brilliancy; it was carefully combed up from the nape of her neck, in order to show the beautiful shape of her head, and its fine set upon her shoulders. Her eyebrows and eye-lashes were dyed black with Arabian antimony; and so carefully was the red of her lips put on, that even Justinian, who kissed those lips, never suspected an aid to Nature by means of Phœnician scarlet. Every tiny hair on her alabaster arm had been carefully destroyed: and the delicate rose-colour of her finger-nails was the daily care of a specially-appointed slave.
And yet, without all these arts, Theodora, who was not yet forty years of age, would have passed for an extremely lovely woman. Her countenance was certainly not noble; no noble, or even proud spirit, spoke from her fatigued and weirdly shining eyes; round her lips played an habitual smile, the dimples of which indicated the place of the first future wrinkle; and her cheeks, beneath the eyes, showed traces of exhaustion.
But as she now gracefully moved towards the Emperor, delicately holding up the heavy folds of her dark-yellow silk robes with her left hand, her whole appearance produced a bewitching charm, similar to the sweet and soothing scent of Indian balsam which she shed around her.
"What pleases my imperial lord so much? May I share his delight?" she asked in a sweet and flattering voice.
Those present prostrated themselves before the Empress, scarcely less humbly than before the Emperor.
Justinian started upon seeing her, as if he had been caught in some culpable act, and tried to conceal the portrait in the folds of his chlamys. But it was too late. The Empress had already fixed her quick eyes upon it.
"We are admiring," said the Emperor, "the--the fine chasing of the gold frame."
And, blushing, he gave her the portrait.
"Well," said Theodora, smiling, "there is not much to admire in the frame. But the picture is not bad. It is surely the Gothic Queen?"