refinement and an elegance about the empress, a grace and sweet dignity,
that is fascinating. This is royalty,--stately and cold perhaps: even
the mouth may be a little cruel, I begin to perceive, as I think of her;
but she wears the purple by divine right. I have not seen on any walls
any figure walking out of history so captivating as this lady, who would
seem to have been worthy of apotheosis in a Christian edifice. Can
there be any doubt that this lovely woman was orthodox? She, also, has a
story, which you doubtless have been recalling as you read. Is it worth
while to repeat even its outlines? This charming regal woman was the
daughter of the keeper of the bears in the circus at Constantinople;
and she early went upon the stage as a pantomimist and buffoon. She was
beautiful, with regular features, a little pale, but with a tinge of
natural color, vivacious eyes, and an easy motion that displayed to
advantage the graces of her small but elegant figure. I can see all that
in the mosaic. But she sold her charms to whoever cared to buy them in
Constantinople; she led a life of dissipation that cannot be even hinted
at in these days; she went off to Egypt as the concubine of a general;
was deserted, and destitute even to misery in Cairo; wandered about a
vagabond in many Eastern cities, and won the reputation everywhere of
the most beautiful courtesan of her time; reappeared in Constantinople;
and, having, it is said, a vision of her future, suddenly took to a
pretension of virtue and plain sewing; contrived to gain the notice of
Justinian, to inflame his passions as she did those of all the world
besides, to captivate him into first an alliance, and at length a
marriage. The emperor raised her to an equal seat with himself on his
throne; and she was worshiped as empress in that city where she had been
admired as harlot. And on the throne she was a wise woman, courageous
and chaste; and had her palaces on the Bosphorus; and took good care of
her beauty, and indulged in the pleasures of a good table; had ministers
who kissed her feet; a crowd of women and eunuchs in her secret
chambers, whose passions she indulged; was avaricious and sometimes
cruel; and founded a convent for the irreclaimably bad of her own sex,
some of whom liked it, and some of whom threw themselves into the sea
in despair; and when she died was an irreparable loss to her emperor. So
that it seems to me it is a pity that the historian should say that