"What frantic shouts! What pushing and crowding!" said the elder, a man of middle height, whose shrewd, keen eyes were closely scanning everything that was passing around him.
"And it is not the Romans who shout and roar most wildly and frenziedly, but our own dear cousins," replied the other.
"Was I not right, friend Theudigesel? Here, among the people themselves, we shall learn more, obtain better information, in a single night, than if we exchanged letters with this book-learned King for many months."
"What we see here with our own eyes is almost incredible!"
Just at that moment loud cries reached their ears from the gate behind them. Two negroes, naked except for an apron of peacock feathers about their loins, were swinging gold staves around their woolly heads, evidently trying to force a passage for a train behind them.
"Make way," they shouted constantly; "make way for the noble, Modigesel."
But they could not succeed in breaking through the crowd; their calls only attracted more curious spectators. So the eight Moors behind, who were clad, or rather unclad, in the same way, were compelled to set down their swaying burden, a richly gilded, half open litter. Its back was made of narrow purple cushions, framed and supported by ivory rods; white ostrich feathers and the red plumage of the flamingo nodded from the knobs of the ivory.
"Ho, my friend,"--the younger man addressed the occupant of the litter, a fair-haired Vandal about twenty-seven years old in a gleaming silk robe, richly ornamented with gold and gems,--"are the nights here always so gay?"
The noble was evidently surprised that any one should presume to accost him so unceremoniously. Listlessly opening a pair of sleepy eyes, he turned to his companion; for beside him now appeared a young woman, marvellously beautiful, though almost too fully developed, in a splendid robe, but overloaded with ornament. Her fair skin seemed to gleam with a dull yellow lustre; the expression of the perfect features, as regular as though carved by rule, yet rigid as those of the Sphinx, had absolutely no trace of mind or soul, only somewhat indolent but not yet sated sensuousness: she resembled a marvellously beautiful but very dangerous animal. So her charms exerted a power that was bewildering, oppressive, rather than winning. The Juno-like figure was not ornamented, but rather hung and laden, with gold chains, circlets, rings, and disks.
"O-oh-a-ah! I say, Astarte!" lisped her companion, in an affected whisper. He had heard from a Græco-Roman dandy in Constantinople that it was fashionable to speak too low to be understood. "Scarecrows, those two fellows, eh?" And, sighing over the exertion, he pushed up the thick chaplet of roses which had slipped down over his eyes. "Like the description of Genseric and his graybeards! Just see--ah--one has a wolfskin for a cloak. The other is carrying--in the Grove of Venus--a huge spear!--You ought to show yourselves--over yonder--in the Circus--for money, monsters!"