With a few words to
signify that his message was important, he delivered a letter, and
Basil, turning aside impatiently, broke the seal. Upon the blank
side of a slip of papyrus cut from some old manuscript were written
lines which seemed to be in Greek, and proved to be Latin in Greek
characters, a foppery beginning to be used by the modish at Rome.
'Heliodora to Basil. You are bidden to supper. Come if you will. If
you come not, I care not.'
'Say that I gave you no reply,' were Basil's blunt words, as he
walked on past the ass and the mules.
CHAPTER XI
SEEKING
They passed beneath the walls of the amphitheatre and by
Constantine's triumphal arch. Like all the innumerable fountains of
the city, the Meta Sudans stood dry; around the base of the rayed
colossus of Apollo, goats were browsing. Thence they went along by
the Temple of Venus and Rome, its giant columns yet unshaken, its
roof gleaming with gilded bronze; and so under the Arch of Titus,
when, with a sharp turn to the left, they began the ascent of the
Palatine.
The vast buildings which covered the Imperial hill, though
discoloured by the lapse of ages and hung with ivy, had suffered
little diminution of their external majesty; time had made them
venerable, but had not shattered their walls.
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