tters began to appear
before the main gate, both entered the side portico from which were
visible the chief entrance, the interior galleries, and the courtyard
surrounded by a colonnade of Numidian marble.

Gradually people passed in greater and greater numbers under the lofty
arch of the entrance, over which the splendid quadrigae of Lysias seemed
to bear Apollo and Diana into space. Lygia's eyes were struck by that
magnificence, of which the modest house of Aulus could not have given
her the slightest idea. It was sunset; the last rays were falling on the
yellow Numidian marble of the columns, which shone like gold in those
gleams and changed into rose color also. Among the columns, at the
side of white statues of the Danaides and others, representing gods or
heroes, crowds of people flowed past,--men and women; resembling statues
also, for they were draped in togas, pepluses, and robes, falling with
grace and beauty toward the earth in soft folds, on which the rays of
the setting sun were expiring. A gigantic Hercules, with head in the
light yet, from the breast down sunk in shadow cast by the columns,
looked from above on that throng. Acte showed Lygia senators in
wide-bordered togas, in colored tunics, in sandals with crescents on
them, and knights, and famed artists; she showed her Roman ladies, in
Roman, in Grecian, in fantastic Oriental costume, with hair dressed in
towers or pyramids, or dressed like that of the statues of goddesses,
low on the head, and adorned with flowers. Many men and women did Acte
call by name, adding to their names histories, brief and sometimes
terrible, which pierced Lygia with fear, amazement, and wonder. For her
this was a strange world, whose beauty intoxicated her eyes, but whose
contrasts her girlish understanding could not grasp. In those twilights
of the sky, in those rows of motionless columns vanishing in the
distance, and in those statuesque people, there was a certain lofty
repose. It seemed that in the midst of those marbles of simple lines
demigods might live free of care, at peace and in happiness. Meanwhile
the low voice of Acte disclosed, time after time, a new and dreadful
secret of that palace and those people. See, there at a distance is the
covered portico on whose columns and floor are still visible red stains
from the blood with which Caligula sprinkled the white marble when he
fell beneath the knife of Cassius Chaerea; there his wife was slain;
there his child wa