With her long fingers lighted up red by the glowing coals of the brazier Marius looked close upon the most beautiful woman in the world, who was also the great paradox of the age, among her boys and girls.

As has been truly said of the numerous representations of her in art, so in life, she had the air of one curious, restless, to enter into conversation with the first comer.

She had certainly the power of stimulating a very ambiguous sort of curiosity about herself.

And Marius found this enigmatic point in her expression, that even after seeing her many times he could never precisely recall her features in absence.

The lad of six years, looking older, who stood beside her, impatiently plucking a rose to pieces over the hearth, was, in outward appearance, his father--the young Verissimus--over again; but with a certain feminine length of feature, and with all his mother's alertness, or license, of gaze.
Yet rumour knocked at every door and window of the imperial house regarding the adulterers who knocked at them, or quietly left their lovers' garlands there.