* * * * On a winter's day, at the hour of sundown, Heliodora sat in her great house on the Quirinal, musing sullenly.

Beside her a brazier of charcoal glowed in the dusk, casting a warm glimmer upon the sculptured forms which were her only companions; she was wrapped in a scarlet cloak, with a hood which shadowed her face.

All day the sun had shone brilliantly, but it glistened afar on snowy summits, and scarce softened the mountain wind which blew through the streets of Rome.
To divert a hungry populace, now six months besieged, Bessas was offering entertainments such as suited the Saturnalian season.

To-day he had invited Rome to the Circus Maximus, where, because no spectacle could be provided imposing enough to fill the whole vast space, half a dozen shows were presented simultaneously; the spectators grouped here and there, in number not a fiftieth part of that assembly which thundered at the chariots in olden time.

Here they sat along the crumbling, grass-grown, and, as their nature was, gladly forgot their country's ruin, their own sufferings, and the doom which menaced them.
Equestrians, contortionists, mimes, singers, were readily found in the city, where a brave or an honest man had become rare indeed.