'Tell me, Julia, is it not reported that the barbarians are really
marching into Italy?'
'Everybody has heard of it. The emperor is so discomposed by the
rumour, that he has forbidden the very name of the Goths to be mentioned
in his presence again.'
'For my part,' continued Vetranio, drawing Camilla towards him, and
playfully tapping her little dimpled hand, 'I am in anxious expectation
of the Goths, for I have designed a statue of Minerva, for which I can
find no model so fit as a woman of that troublesome nation. I am
informed upon good authority, that their limbs are colossal, and their
sense of propriety most obediently pliable under the discipline of the
purse.'
'If the Goths supply you with a model for anything,' said a courtier who
had joined the group while Vetranio was speaking, 'it will be with a
representation of the burning of your palace at Rome, which they will
enable you to paint from the inexhaustible reservoir of your own
wounds.'
The individual who uttered this last observation was remarkable among
the brilliant circle around him by his excessive ugliness.
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