Hildebad and Teja were with them. They were the leaders of the party which had long since desired a more severe treatment of the Italians, whom they at once hated and shunned; but had been forced, against their will, to give way to the milder opinions of the King.
What looks of hatred shot from their eyes upon the aristocratic Roman who now came to witness the death of the great Gothic hero!
Cethegus walked quietly past them, and lifted the heavy woollen curtain that divided this from the next apartment--the ante-chamber of the sick-room.
On entering, he greeted with a profound inclination a tall and queenly woman, enveloped in a black mourning veil, who, grave and silent, but composed and without tears, stood before a marble table covered with records. It was Amalaswintha, the widowed daughter of Theodoric.
A woman above thirty years of age, she was still extremely, though coldly, beautiful. She wore her rich dark hair parted and waved in the fashion of the Greeks. Her high forehead, her large, open eyes, her straight nose, the pride expressed in her almost manly features, and the majesty of her full form, gave her an imposing dignity, and, clad in a garment folded in true Grecian style, she resembled a Juno of Polycletus which had descended from its pedestal. Her arm, more supporting than supported, was laid within that of a youth of about seventeen years of age--Athalaric, her son, the heir of the kingdom of the Goths.
He did not resemble his mother, but had the nature of his unhappy father, Eutharic, whom a wasting heart disease had hurried to the grave in the bloom of life. For this reason, Amalaswintha saw with sorrow that her son grew daily more like his father; and it was no longer a secret at the court of Ravenna that all the signs of the disease were already visible in the young man.
Athalaric was as beautiful as all the other members of this royal house, descended from the gods. Heavy black eyebrows and long eyelashes shaded his beautiful dark eyes, that now melted with an expression of dreamy reverie, and now flashed with intellectual brilliancy. Dark brown tangled locks hung over his pale temples, on which, when he was excited, the blue veins swelled convulsively. On his noble brow physical pain or sad resignation had traced deep lines, strange to see on his youthful countenance. Marble paleness and vivid red quickly alternated in his transparent cheeks. His tall but bent-frame generally seemed to hang, so to speak, on its hinges, as if tired, and only at times he drew himself up with startling suddenness.
He did not notice Cethegus, for, leaning on his mother's breast, he had in his sadness flung his Grecian mantle over that young head, which was soon destined to wear a crown.
At some distance from these two figures, near an open window that afforded a view of the marble steps upon which lay the Gothic warriors, stood, lost in thought, a woman--or was it a girl?--of surprising and dazzling beauty; it was Mataswintha, the sister of Athalaric.
She resembled her mother in height and nobleness of form, but her more sharply-cut features were filled with fiery and passionate life, which was only slightly concealed under an aspect of artificial coldness.