All that was honourable or intellectual in his character had now completely ceded to all that was base and animal.

He looked round, and perceiving that Ulpius had silently quitted him, softly closed the door.

Then advancing to the bedside with the utmost caution compatible with the involuntary unsteadiness of an intoxicated man, he took the lamp from the vase in which it was half concealed, and earnestly surveyed by its light the figure of the sleeping girl.
The head of Antonina was thrown back and rested rather over than on her pillow.

Her light linen dress had become so disordered during the night that it displayed her throat and part of her bosom, in all the dawning beauties of their youthful formation, to the gaze of the licentious Roman.

One hand half supported her head, and was almost entirely hidden in the locks of her long black hair, which had escaped from the white cincture intended to confine it, and now streamed over the pillow in dazzling contrast to the light bed-furniture around it.
The other hand held tightly clasped to her bosom the precious fragment of her broken lute.