The magic of death lies there.

The mosaic works of Saint Vitale, with their barbarous angels and their aureolated empresses, make one feel the monstrous delights of the Orient.

Despoiled to-day of its silver lamels, the grave of Galla Placidia is frightful under its crypt, luminous yet gloomy.

When one looks through an opening in the sarcophagus, it seems as if one saw the daughter of Theodosius, seated on her golden chair, erect in her gown studded with stones and embroidered with scenes from the Old Testament; her beautiful, cruel face preserved hard and black with aromatic plants, and her ebony hands immovable on her knees.

For thirteen centuries she retained this funereal majesty, until one day a child passed a candle through the opening of the grave and burned the body." Madame Martin-Belleme asked what that dead woman, so obstinate in her conceit, had done during her life.
"Twice a slave," said Dechartre, "she became twice an empress." "She must have been beautiful," said Madame Martin.