Without a word the monk removed his cowl. As he did so, Benilo stood rooted to the spot, as if a ghost had arisen from the stone floor before him.
"Madman!" he gasped. "You dare to show yourself in Rome?"
A strange light gleamed in the monk's eyes.
"I came in quest of the End of Time. Do you doubt the sincerity of my intent?"
For a moment they faced each other in silence, then the monk turned and vanished without another word through the panel which closed noiselessly behind him.
When Benilo found himself once more alone, all the elasticity of temper and mind seemed to have deserted him. All the colour had faded from his face, all the light seemed to have gone from his eyes. Thus he remained for a space, neither heeding his surroundings, nor the flight of time. At last he arose and, traversing the cabinet, made for a remote door and passed out. Whatever were his thoughts, no outward sign betrayed them, as with the suave and impenetrable mien of the born courtier, he entered the vast hall of audience.
A motley crowd of courtiers, officers, monks and foreign envoys, whose variegated costumes formed a dazzling kaleidoscope almost bewildering to the unaccustomed eye, met the Chamberlain's gaze.
The greater number of those present were recruited from the ranks of the Roman nobility, men whose spare, elegant figures formed a striking contrast to the huge giants of the German imperial guard. The mongrel and craven descendants of African, Syrian and Slavonian slaves, a strange jumble of races and types, with all the visible signs of their heterogeneous origin, stared with insolent wonder at the fair-haired sons of the North, who took their orders from no man, save the grandson of the mighty emperor Otto the Great, the vanquisher of the Magyars on the tremendous field of the Lech.
A strange medley of palace officials, appointed after the ruling code of the Eastern Empire, chamberlains, pages and grooms, masters of the outer court, masters of the inner court, masters of the robe, masters of the horse, seneschals, high stewards and eunuchs, in their sweeping citron and orange coloured gowns, lent a glowing enchantment to the scene.
No glaring lights marred the pervading softness of the atmosphere; all objects animate and inanimate seemed in complete harmony with each other. The entrance to the great hall of audience was flanked with two great pillars of Numidian marble, toned by time to hues of richest orange. The hall itself was surrounded by a colonnade of the Corinthian order, whereon had been lavished exquisite carvings; in niches behind the columns stood statues in basalt, thrice the size of life. Enormous pillars of rose-coloured marble supported the roof, decorated in the fantastic Byzantine style; the floor, composed of serpentine, porphyry and Numidian marble, was a superb work of art. In the centre a fountain threw up sprays of perfumed water, its basin bordered with glistening shells from India and the Archipelago.