"Monstrous times have robbed us Romans of the power of the sword. But they cannot rob us of the power of the spirit, which will endure forever."
The stranger replied with a stony stare of contempt.
Beside the Lord Atenulf of Benevento sat a tall girl with heavy coils of blue black hair, eyes that smouldered with a sombre light, curved carnation lips set in a perfect, oval face, and seeming more scarlet than they were, owing to her ivory pallor, the tint of the furled magnolia bud which is, perhaps, only seen to perfection in Italy and especially in Rome.
She looked at the grave-faced guest with quickened eyes.
Snatching some vine leaves from a pyramid of grapes, as purple as the tapestries of Tyre, she arose and laying her hand on the stranger's arm, said laughingly:
"Oh, what a brow! Dark as a thundercloud in June. Let me crown you with the leaves of the vine! Perchance the hour will evoke the mood!"
She twisted the leaves into a wreath and dropped them lightly on his head. The eyes of the silent guest, set in a face of sanguine color, leered viciously, with the looks of one who believes himself, however mistakenly, master of himself. There was a contemptuous curl about his lips. They were thick lips and florid.
"Ah!" he turned to the girl in a barbarous jargon, "you are one of those who go veiled in the streets."
And as he spoke his eyes leered with yet livelier malice.
The girl shrank back.