s pressed into her head: Was not that he, the terrible, the
all-powerful? She had not seen him hitherto, and she thought that he
looked differently. She had imagined some kind of ghastly face, with
malignity petrified in its features; now she saw a great head, fixed on
a thick neck, terrible, it is true, but almost ridiculous, for from a
distance it resembled the head of a child. A tunic of amethyst color,
forbidden to ordinary mortals, cast a bluish tinge on his broad and
short face. He had dark hair, dressed, in the fashion introduced by
Otho, in four curls.

He had no beard, because he had sacrificed it recently to Jove,--for
which all Rome gave him thanks, though people whispered to each other
that he had sacrificed it because his beard, like that of his whole
family, was red. In his forehead, projecting strongly above his
brows, there remained something Olympian. In his contracted brows the
consciousness of supreme power was evident; but under that forehead of
a demigod was the face of a monkey, a drunkard, and a comedian,--vain,
full of changing desires, swollen with fat, notwithstanding his youth;
besides, it was sickly and foul. To Lygia he seemed ominous, but above
all repulsive.

After a while he laid down the emerald and ceased to look at her. Then
she saw his prominent blue eyes, blinking before the excess of light,
glassy, without thought, resembling the eyes of the dead.

"Is that the hostage with whom Vinicius is in love?" asked he, turning
to Petronius.

"That is she," answered Petronius.

"What are her people called?"

"The Lygians."

"Does Vinicius think her beautiful?"

"Array a rotten olive trunk in the peplus of a woman, and Vinicius will
declare it beautiful. But on thy countenance, incomparable judge, I read
her sentence already. Thou hast no need to pronounce it! The sentence is
true: she is too dry, thin, a mere blossom on a slender stalk; and thou,
O divine aesthete, esteemest the stalk in a woman. Thrice and four times
art thou right! The face alone does not signify. I have learned much in
thy company, but even now I have not a perfect cast of the eye. But I am
ready to lay a wager with Tullius Senecio concerning his mistress, that,
although at a feast, when all are reclining, it is difficult to judge
the whole form, thou hast said in thy mind already, 'Too narrow in the
hips.'"

"Too narrow in the hips," answered Nero, blinking.

On Petronius's lips appeared a scarcely perceptibl