'll
persuade him, never fear."

And with a final significant nod the two men parted and once more mixed
with the crowd.

More than one high-born lady now had ordered her bearers to set her
litter down close to the rostrum whence she could watch the sale, and
mayhap make a bid for a purchase on her own account; the rich Roman
matrons with large private fortunes and households of their own,
imperious and independent, were the object of grave deference and of
obsequious courtesy--not altogether unmixed with irony, on the part of
the young men around them.

They did not mix with the crowd but remained in their litters, reclining
on silken cushions, their dark tunics and richly coloured stoles
standing out in sombre notes against the more gaily-decked-out gilded
youth of Rome, whilst their serious and oft-times stern manner, their
measured and sober speech, seemed almost set in studied opposition to
the idle chattering, the flippant tone, the bored affectation of the
outwardly more robust sex.

And among them all Taurus Antinor, praefect of Rome, with his ruddy hair
and bronzed skin, his massive frame clad in gorgeously embroidered
tunic, his whole appearance heavy and almost rough, in strange contrast
alike to the young decadents of the day as to the rigid primness of the
patrician matrons, just as his harsh, even voice seemed to dominate the
lazy and mellow trebles of the votaries of fashion.

The auctioneer had in the meanwhile cast a quick comprehensive glance
over his wares, throwing an admonition here, a command there.

"That yellow hair--let it hang, woman! do not touch it I say.... Slip
that goatskin off thy loins, man ... By Jupiter 'tis the best of thee
thou hidest.... Hold thy chin up girl, we'll have no doleful faces
to-day."

Sometimes his admonition required more vigorous argument. The praefect
was appealed to against the recalcitrant. Then the harsh unimpassioned
voice with its curious intonation in the pronouncing of the Latin
words, would give a brief order and the lictor's flail would whizz in
the air and descend with a short sharp whistling sound on obstinately
bowed shoulder or unwilling hand, and the auctioneer would continue his
perorations.

"What will it please my lord's grace to buy this day? A skilled horseman
from Dacia?... I have one.... A pearl.... He can mount an untamed steed
and drive a chariot in treble harness through the narrowest streets of
Rome.... He can ... What--no?--not a