CHAPTER 7. THE BED-CHAMBER.
It is now time to resume our chronicle of the eventful night which
marked the destruction of Antonina's lute and the conspiracy against
Antonina's honour.
The gates of Vetranio's palace were closed, and the noises in it were
all hushed; the banquet was over, the triumph of the Nightingale Sauce
had been achieved, and the daybreak was already glimmering in the
eastern sky, when the senator's favoured servant, the freedman Carrio,
drew back the shutter of the porter's lodge, where he had been dozing
since the conclusion of the feast, and looked out lazily into the
street. The dull, faint light of dawn was now strengthening slowly over
the lonely roadway and on the walls of the lofty houses. Of the groups
of idlers of the lowest class who had assembled during the evening in
the street to snuff the fragrant odours which steamed afar from
Vetranio's kitchens, not one remained; men, women, and children had long
since departed to seek shelter wherever they could find it, and to
fatten their lean bodies on what had been charitable bestowed on them of
the coarser relics of the banquet.
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