"Well, she said nothing about the sword, Olaf, so let it be. All she said was that I must be careful that the robe matched the colour of the necklace you wear. She cannot bear colours which jar upon each other, especially by lamp-light."
"Am I a man," I asked angrily, "or a beast being decked for sacrifice?"
"Fie, Olaf, have you not yet forgotten your heathen talk? Remember, I pray you, that you are now a Christian in a Christian land."
"I thank you for reminding me of it," I replied; and that moment a chamberlain, entering hurriedly, commanded my presence.
"Good luck to you, Olaf," said Martina as I followed him. "Be sure to tell me the news later--or to-morrow."
Then the chamberlain led me, not into the audience hall, as I had expected, but to the private imperial dining chamber. Here, reclining upon couches in the old Roman fashion, one on either side of a narrow table on which stood fruits and flagons of rich-hued Greek wine, were the two greatest people in the world, the Augusta Irene and the Augustus Constantine, her son.
She was wonderfully apparelled in a low-cut garment of white silk, over which fell a mantle of the imperial purple, and I noted that on her dazzling bosom hung that necklace of emerald beetles separated by golden shells which she had caused to be copied from my own. On her fair hair that grew low upon her forehead and was parted in the middle, she wore a diadem of gold in which were set emeralds to match the beetles of the necklace. The Augustus was arrayed in the festal garments of a Cæsar, also covered with a purple cloak. He was a heavy-faced and somewhat stupid-looking youth, dark-haired, like his father and uncles, but having large, blue, and not unkindly eyes. From his flushed face I gathered that he had drunk well of the strong Greek wine, and from the sullen look about his mouth that, as was common, he had been quarrelling with his mother.
I stood at the end of the table and saluted first the Empress and then the Emperor.
"Who's this?" he asked, glancing at me.
"General Olaf, of my guard," she answered, "Governor of the State Prison. You remember, you wished me to send for him to settle the point as to which we were arguing."
"Oh! yes. Well, General Olaf, of my mother's guard, have you not been told that you should salute the Augustus before the Augusta?"