Complete Works of Wilkie Collins by Wilkie Collins Read Free Book Online

then passing near him with a dish of fruit.
    Having received his message, the slave retired to the entrance of the apartment, and beckoning to a man who stood outside the door, motioned him to approach Vetranio’s couch.
    This individual immediately hurried across the room to the window where the elegant Roman awaited him. Not the slightest description of him is needed; for he belonged to a class with which moderns are as well acquainted as ancients — a class which has survived all changes of nations and manners — a class which came in with the first rich man in the world, and will only go out with the last. In a word, he was a parasite.
    He enjoyed, however, one great superiority over his modern successors: in his day flattery was a profession — in ours it has sunk to a pursuit.
    ‘I shall leave Ravenna this evening,’ said Vetranio.
    The parasite made three low bows and smiled ecstatically.
    ‘You will order my travelling equipage to be at the palace gates an hour before sunset.’
    The parasite declared he should never forget the honour of the commission, and left the room.
    The sprightly Camilla, who had overheard Vetranio’s command, jumped off her couch, as soon as the parasite’s back was turned, and running up to the senator, began to reproach him for the determination he had just formed.
    ‘Have you no compunction at leaving me to the dulness of this horrible palace, to satisfy your idle fancy for going to Rome,’ said she, pouting her pretty lip, and playing with a lock of the dark brown hair that clustered over Vetranio’s brow.
     
    ‘Has the senator Vetranio so little regard for his friends as to leave them to the mercy of the Goths?’ said another lady, advancing with a winning smile to Camilla’s side.
    ‘Ah, those Goths!’ exclaimed Vetranio, turning to the last speaker. ‘Tell me, Julia, is it not reported that the barbarians are really marching into Italy?’
    ‘Everybody has heard of it. The emperor is so discomposed by the rumour, that he has forbidden the very name of the Goths to be mentioned in his presence again.’
    ‘For my part,’ continued Vetranio, drawing Camilla towards him, and playfully tapping her little dimpled hand, ‘I am in anxious expectation of the Goths, for I have designed a statue of Minerva, for which I can find no model so fit as a woman of that troublesome nation. I am informed upon good authority, that their limbs are colossal, and their sense of propriety most obediently pliable under the discipline of the purse.’
    ‘If the Goths supply you with a model for anything,’ said a courtier who had joined the group while Vetranio was speaking, ‘it will be with a representation of the burning of your palace at Rome, which they will enable you to paint from the inexhaustible reservoir of your own wounds.’
    The individual who uttered this last observation was remarkable among the brilliant circle around him by his excessive ugliness. Urged by his personal disadvantages, and the loss of all his property at the gaming-table, he had latterly personated a character, the accomplishments attached to which rescued him, by their disagreeable originality in that frivolous age, from oblivion or contempt. He was a Cynic philosopher.
    His remark, however, produced no other effect on his hearers’ serenity than to excite their merriment. Vetranio laughed, Camilla laughed, Julia laughed. The idea of a troop of barbarians ever being able to burn a palace at Rome was too wildly ridiculous for any one’s gravity; and as the speech was repeated in other parts of the room, in spite of their dulness and lassitude the whole Court laughed.
    ‘I know not why I should be amused by that man’s nonsense,’ said Camilla, suddenly becoming grave at the very crisis of a most attractive smile, ‘when I am so melancholy at the thought of Vetranio’s departure. What will become of me when he is gone? Alas! who will be left in the palace to compose songs to my beauty and music for