"Command me!" he stammered, "I obey." Just then a knocking was heard at the principal door.
"Away!" cried the Empress, "take my letter to the Queen from the ground, and think over what I have said: patrician if she dies, torture and death if she lives. Go!"
Galatea pushed the bewildered man through the secret entrance, turned the statue into its place again, and went to open the great door.
CHAPTER XVIII.
There entered a stately woman, taller and of coarser frame than the small and delicate Empress; not so seductively beautiful, but younger and more blooming, with a fresh complexion and natural manners.
"Welcome, Antonina, sister of my heart! Come to my arms!" cried the Empress to the new-comer, who humbly bent before her.
Antonina obeyed in silence.
"How hollow her eyes have become," she thought, as she rose from the embrace.
"How bony is the soldier's wife!" said the delicate Empress to herself, and looked at her friend.
"You are as blooming as Hebe!" she said aloud, "and how well the white silk becomes your fresh complexion. Have you anything to tell me of--of him?" she asked indifferently, and took from the wash-stand a much-dreaded instrument, a sharp lancet with an ivory handle, with which clumsy, or even only unfortunate, slaves were often pricked by their angry mistress.