Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - Quo Vadis (1897 Curtin translation).djvu/71

Rh galleries, and the courtyard surrounded by a colonnade of Numidian marble.

Gradually people passed in greater and greater numbers under the lofty arch of the entrance, over which the splendid quadrigæ of Lysias seemed to bear Apollo and Diana into space. Lygia’s eyes were struck by this splendid view, of which the modest house of Aulus could not give her the least idea. It was sunset; the last rays were falling on the yellow Numidian marble of the columns, which shone like gold in those gleams and changed into rose color also. Among the columns, at the side of white statues of the Danaides and others, representing gods or heroes, crowds of people flowed past,—men and women; resembling statues also, for they were draped in togas, pepluses, and robes, falling with grace and beauty to the earth in soft folds, on which the rays of the setting sun were expiring. A gigantic Hercules, with head in the light yet, from the breast down sunk in shadow cast by the columns, looked from above on that throng. Acte showed Lygia senators in togas with wide border, in colored tunics, in sandals with crescents on them, and knights, and famed artists; she showed her Roman ladies, arrayed now in Roman, now in Grecian, now in fantastic Oriental costume, with hair dressed in towers or pyramids, or dressed like, that of the statues of goddesses, low on the head, and adorned with flowers. Many men and women did Acte call by name, adding to their names histories, brief and sometimes terrible, which pierced Lygia with fear, wonder, and amazement. This was for her a strange world, the beauty of which intoxicated her eyes, but the contradictions of which her girlish understanding could not grasp. In those twilights of the sky, in those rows of motionless columns vanishing in the depth, and in those people similar to statues, there was a certain grand repose. It seemed that in the midst of those marbles of simple lines certain demigods ought to live free from care, at peace and happy. Meanwhile the low voice of Acte disclosed, time after time, a new and terrible secret of that palace and those people. See, there at a distance is visible the covered portico on whose columns and floor are still visible red stains of the blood, with which Caligula sprinkled the white marble when he fell beneath the knife of Cassius Chærea; there his wife was slain; there his child was dashed against a stone; under that wing is the dungeon in which the younger Drusus gnawed his hands from hunger; there the