Oh, flowers! Buy my flowers![[3]]
So sung the flower-girls, as, carrying between them their basket, heavy with the rifled treasures of the spring, they walked on among the crowd, selling from time to time a wreath or a nosegay. The passers-by, however, unembarrassed with any burden, were more rapid in their movements. The crowd became thinner and thinner as the more early hurried on. Scattered groups succeeded, hastening forward with an accelerated pace, lest they should be too late, or gain but bad places at the show; and at length the numbers were so diminished as to leave the street nearly vacant; while the girls themselves, finding that they had been outstripped by their customers, hurried their pace as fast as they could, in order to find a new market, where the multitudes were assembled.
At the time when the street was the thinnest of people, however, the trampling of horses, coming at a quick pace, was heard, and both the girls turned round to look, the one exclaiming, "It is the bishop, I am sure," and the other replying, "No, it is the quæstor by the number of horses: the bishop always goes in his chariot, foolish girl."
"Wrong, both of us," rejoined the first; "it is but a large troop of barbarians."
"Oh, they will buy our flowers, then," cried the other. "I dare say they are from Ætius's army; and the barbarians always spend their money as fast as they get it."
As they thus spoke, the troop which called forth these observations approached; and the two girls--one of them was remarkably pretty, and the other thought herself so--turned their faces, with an air of modesty which it is possible they did not really possess, towards the point straight before them, and taking up again the burden of their song, "Oh, flowers! Buy my flowers!" they went on carolling gayly as the strangers came near.
He who rode at their head was a young man of about two-and-twenty, dressed in the Roman costume; but those who followed were clothed, though with some appearance of splendour, in the wilder garb of the Huns. Riding up, the young stranger stopped his horse by the side of the first flower girl, who instantly held up a bunch of very beautiful blossoms, singing on, with an air of sportive coquetry, "Oh, flowers! Buy my flowers." Theodore, for he it was, took the flowers, and gave her a piece of money, saying, at the same time, "Canst thou tell me, pretty lass, where dwells Julius Lentulus. His house used to be here, methinks; but it is long since I saw it, and where I thought it stood appears nothing but a high wall."
"True, beautiful youth," replied the girl--"true, his house stood there: but Valentinian wanted the land to make a fishpond of; so he pulled down the house, and Julius Lentulus was obliged to remove; and now dwells farther up, at the side of the Aventine. The emperor, however, betook himself to Ravenna; the fishpond was never made, and the edile had the ground walled up; for he dare not give it back to Julius Lentulus for fear of the emperor."
"Canst thou not direct me more exactly," demanded Theodore; "for I wish to find the house instantly."
"Ay! now I warrant thee," answered the girl, "thou art seeking the pretty Eudochia: often does she buy flowers of me when I go by the Aventine. Ay! I warrant thee, some old lover of hers; for I remember, when she came back from exile in the barbarian land herself, some two or three years ago. But alas! fair youth, thou hast a rival--nay, not one for that matter, but a hundred, though only one that is dangerous."