Читать книгу Antonina онлайн

45 страница из 118

‘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.’