Valeria

hipped in Rome with rites of the most degrading superstition. Fausta was intensely bitter in her hatred of the Christian name, and strenuously endeavoured to incite her son, the

over her was very great. This worthy pair, the day after the interview above described, were engaged in a secret concla

leria, and at one end, in a marble niche, stood an ugly image of the goddess Cybele, with her crown of many towers, rudely carved out of olive wood, but quite embrowned, and almost

Fausta had been an Illyrian peasant, and, notwithstanding her embroidered robes and costly jewels, she still exhibited much of the rude peasant character and lack of culture. Her coarse and wrinkled features and swarthy complexion, were all the more striking by their contrast with the snowy mantle, with its gold-embroidered border, which she wore; and

ur counsel on a matter of much importance to th

priest, who also kissed his hand to the black-faced im

the vile plebs, and the still viler slave population, but even among the patricians and nobles. I have

"Certain it is that neither of the Empresses, Prisca or Valeria, ever take part in

here is plotting and conniving between th

the arch-priest, eagerly. "Thi

en now, that Adauctus, the Imperial Treasurer, had been only yesterday closeted with the Empress, and plotting to

dy need not think herself so high and mighty as to be above th

"if I could only see that painted doll, Valeria, abased and degraded. She has t

n anticipation over the prospect, "but also see her pale,

, with exultation, "and the goddess Cybele shal

t them secretly. I'll be a furca to them indeed," he added, punning upon his own name, which had also the signification of an instrum