his untimely hour, that a man might have been seen lurking
beneath the shadows of an antique archway, decorated with half-obliterated
sculptures of the old Etruscan school, in one of the narrow and winding
streets which, lying parallel to the Suburra, ran up the hollow between
the Viminal and Quirinal hills.

He was a tall and well-framed figure, though so lean as to seem almost
emaciated. His forehead was unusually high and narrow, and channelled with
deep horizontal lines of thought and passion, across which cut at right
angles the sharp furrows of a continual scowl, drawing the corners of his
heavy coal-black eyebrows into strange contiguity. Beneath these, situated
far back in their cavernous recesses, a pair of keen restless eyes glared
out with an expression fearful to behold--a jealous, and unquiet,
ever-wandering glance--so sinister, and ominous, and above all so
indicative of a perturbed and anguished spirit, that it could not be
looked upon without suggesting those wild tales, which speak of fiends
dwelling in the revivified and untombed carcasses of those who die in
unrepented sin. His nose was keenly Roman; with a deep wrinkle seared, as
it would seem, into the sallow flesh from either nostril downward. His
mouth, grimly compressed, and his jaws, for the most part, firmly clinched
together, spoke volumes of immutable and iron resolution; while all his
under lip was scarred, in many places, with the trace of wounds, inflicted
beyond doubt, in some dread paroxysm, by the very teeth it covered.

The dress which this remarkable looking individual at that time wore, was
the _penula_, as it was called; a short, loose straight-cut overcoat,
reaching a little way below the knees, not fitted to the shape, but looped
by woollen frogs all down the front, with broad flaps to protect the arms,
and a square cape or collar, which at the pleasure of the wearer could be
drawn up so as to conceal all the lower part of the countenance, or
suffered to fall down upon the shoulders.

This uncouth vestment, which was used only by men of the lowest order, or
by others solely when engaged in long and toilsome journeys, or in cold
wintry weather, was composed of a thick loose-napped frieze or serge, of a
dark purplish brown, with loops and _fibulae_, or frogs, of a dull dingy
red.

The wearer's legs were bare down to the very feet, which were protected by
coarse shoes of heavy leather, fastened about the ancles by a thong, with
a