finding
discreet answers to the questions with which he was privately assailed
by his kinsfolk, did not come to table. Having dined, Basil and his
friend set forth on foot, half a dozen servants walking behind them.
Midway in the descent of the Caelian, they were met by an odd
procession: a beautiful boy of some twelve years old, clad in yellow,
riding upon a small white ass with rich housings, and behind him three
slaves, dark-visaged men of the East, on mules of great size,
caparisoned with yellow cloth, to which hung innumerable tinkling
bells. At sight of Basil, the child drew rein; jumped down, and ran
forward with smiling demonstrations of respect.

'What is it, Laetus?' asked Basil, with no welcome upon his sombre
countenance. 'I cannot talk with you now.'

The boy, who had been sold into slavery from the far island of the
Angles, did but smatter the Roman tongue. With a few words to signify
that his message was important, he delivered a letter, and Basil,
turning aside impatiently, broke the seal. Upon the blank side of a
slip of papyrus cut from some old manuscript were written lines which
seemed to be in Greek, and proved to be Latin in Greek characters, a
foppery beginning to be used by the modish at Rome.

'Heliodora to Basil. You are bidden to supper. Come if you will. If you
come not, I care not.'

'Say that I gave you no reply,' were Basil's blunt words, as he walked
on past the ass and the mules.

CHAPTER XI

SEEKING

They passed beneath the walls of the amphitheatre and by Constantine's
triumphal arch. Like all the innumerable fountains of the city, the
Meta Sudans stood dry; around the base of the rayed colossus of Apollo,
goats were browsing. Thence they went along by the Temple of Venus and
Rome, its giant columns yet unshaken, its roof gleaming with gilded
bronze; and so under the Arch of Titus, when, with a sharp turn to the
left, they began the ascent of the Palatine.

The vast buildings which covered the Imperial hill, though discoloured
by the lapse of ages and hung with ivy, had suffered little diminution
of their external majesty; time had made them venerable, but had not
shattered their walls. For two centuries and a half, they had stood all
but desolate, and within that time had thrice been sacked by
barbarians, yet something of the riches and art which made their
ancient glory was still discoverable in the countless halls and
chambers; statues, busts, mural paintings, tr