the
richness of the material. Scenes from the great poems were reproduced
almost microscopically in carnelian cameos, onyx, and agate, and the
emeralds, topazes, and amethysts were decorated with profiles of
goddesses and heroes.

The slave clasped a necklace of stones of complicated design upon
Sonnica's uncovered breast; she loaded her fingers to the tips with
rings, and the whiteness of her arms seemed more diaphanous girdled here
and there by wide bracelets of gold. To add more expression to the
countenance, Odacis decorated her mistress with small patches, and then
she proceeded to bind around her body the fascia, or corset of the
epoch, a broad woolen band to support the breast. Sonnica, gazing into
the burnished bronze, smiled at her statue-like reflection, as beautiful
as Venus in repose.

"Which costume, my mistress?" asked Odacis. "Do you wish the tunic with
the golden flowers brought from Crete, or the _kalasiris_ veils,
transparent as air, which you ordered bought in Alexandria?"

Sonnica could not decide. She would choose in the vestiary; and in the
majesty of her unveiled beauty, her papyrus sandals rustling, she walked
from her dormitory followed by her slaves.

Meanwhile Actaeon was waiting in the library. He had visited great
palaces in his travels about the world, he had seen--two years before
the earthquake which ruined it--the celebrated Colossus of Rhodes; he
was familiar with the Serapeum and the tomb of the great conqueror in
Alexandria; he was accustomed to elegance and splendor; yet he could not
conceal surprise at this Grecian house in a barbarian land, more
luxurious and artistic than those of opulent citizens of Athens.

Guided by a slave, and leaving the garden with its whispering foliage
and its cries of exotic birds, he had passed along the colonnade which
gave entrance to the villa. First the vestibule with its plinth of
mosaic, on which were painted ferocious black dogs with fiery eyes,
their fierce and foaming mouths agape, their fangs erect.

Above the door, fastened to a lamp, hung a branch of laurel in honor of
the tutelary gods of the house. Next to the somewhat gloomy vestibule,
beneath the open sky, like a lung of the house, was the atrium with its
four rows of columns supporting the roof and forming an equal number of
cloisters, upon which opened the doors of the rooms, their three panels
decorated with large-headed nails.

In the centre of the atrium was the impluvium,