"Here are sold wine, liquor and tobacco," was written
where once verses of the Koran had been blazoned by reverent hands along
porphyry cornices and capitals of jasper. A Cafe Chantant reared its
impudent little roof where once, far back in the dead cycles, Phoenician
warriors had watched the galleys of the gold-haired favorite of the gods
bear down to smite her against whom the one unpardonable sin of rivalry
to Rome was quoted.
The riot of a Paris guinguette was heard where once the tent of
Belisarius might have been spread above the majestic head that towered
in youth above the tempestuous seas of Gothic armies, as when, silvered
with age, it rose as a rock against the on-sweeping flood of Bulgarian
hordes. The grisette charms of little tobacconists, milliners,
flower-girls, lemonade-sellers, bonbon-sellers, and filles de joie
flaunted themselves in the gaslight where the lustrous sorceress eyes
of Antonina might have glanced over the Afric Sea, while her wanton's
heart, so strangely filled with leonine courage and shameless license,
heroism and brutality, cruelty and self-devotion, swelled under the
purples of her delicate vest, at the glory of the man she at once
dishonored and adored.
Vanitas vanitatum! Under the thirsty soil, under the ill-paved streets,
under the arid turf, the Legions lay dead, with the Carthaginians they
had borne down under the mighty pressure of their phalanx; and the
Byzantine ranks were dust, side by side with the soldiers of Gelimer.
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