"Or a cloven hoof?" cried Oliverotto.
"What was he like?" sneered a third.
Theodora turned upon her questioners, a dash of scorn in her barbed reply.
"I speak of a man, not reptiles like you—you all!"
"Mercy, oh queen, mercy!" begged the apoplectic poet, amid the noisy clamour of his jeering companions. But heedless of their jabbering tongues Theodora continued earnestly:
"Not such men as the barons of Rome are pleased to call themselves, cowardly, vicious,—beasts, who believe not in God nor the devil, and whose aim in life is but to clothe their filthy carcass in gaudy apparel and appease the cravings of their lust and their greed! I speak of a man, something the meaning of which is as dark to you as the riddle of the Sphinx."
The company gazed at each other in mute bewilderment.
Theodora was indeed in a most singular mood.
"Are we not at the Court of Theodora?" shouted the Lord of Bracciano, who was experiencing some inconvenience in the feat of embracing with his short arms the two women between whom he was seated. "Or has some sudden magic transported us to the hermitage of the mad monk, who predicts the End of Time?"
"Nay," Benilo spoke up for the first time since Theodora's rebuke had silenced him, "perhaps our beautiful Queen of Love has in store for her guests just such a riddle as the one the Sphinx proposed to the son of Iokasté—with but a slight variation."