moment loud cries reached their ears from the gate behind
them. Two negroes, naked except for an apron of peacock feathers about
their loins, were swinging gold staves around their woolly heads,
evidently trying to force a passage for a train behind them.

"Make way," they shouted constantly; "make way for the noble,
Modigesel."

But they could not succeed in breaking through the crowd; their calls
only attracted more curious spectators. So the eight Moors behind, who
were clad, or rather _un_clad, in the same way, were compelled to set
down their swaying burden, a richly gilded, half open litter. Its back
was made of narrow purple cushions, framed and supported by ivory rods;
white ostrich feathers and the red plumage of the flamingo nodded from
the knobs of the ivory.

"Ho, my friend,"--the younger man addressed the occupant of the litter,
a fair-haired Vandal about twenty-seven years old in a gleaming silk
robe, richly ornamented with gold and gems,--"are the nights here
always so gay?"

The noble was evidently surprised that any one should presume to accost
him so unceremoniously. Listlessly opening a pair of sleepy eyes, he
turned to his companion; for beside him now appeared a young woman,
marvellously beautiful, though almost too fully developed, in a
splendid robe, but overloaded with ornament. Her fair skin seemed to
gleam with a dull yellow lustre; the expression of the perfect
features, as regular as though carved by rule, yet rigid as those of
the Sphinx, had absolutely no trace of mind or soul, only somewhat
indolent but not yet sated sensuousness: she resembled a marvellously
beautiful but very dangerous animal. So her charms exerted a power that
was bewildering, oppressive, rather than winning. The Juno-like figure
was not ornamented, but rather hung and laden, with gold chains,
circlets, rings, and disks.

"O-oh-a-ah! I say, Astarte!" lisped her companion, in an affected
whisper. He had heard from a Graeco-Roman dandy in Constantinople that
it was fashionable to speak too low to be understood. "Scarecrows,
those two fellows, eh?" And, sighing over the exertion, he pushed up
the thick chaplet of roses which had slipped down over his eyes. "Like
the description of Genseric and his graybeards! Just see--ah--one has a
wolfskin for a cloak. The other is carrying--in the Grove of Venus--a
huge spear!--You ought to show yourselves--over yonder--in the
Circus--for money, monsters!"

The younger stranger