Already some far-seeing gamblers who had drawn low numbers, had bribed the soldiers and wardens to sprinkle the hair and garments of the Christians with valerian water, a decoction which was supposed to attract and excite the appetite of these great cats.

Others, whose tickets were high, paid handsomely for the employment of artifices which need not be detailed, calculated to induce in the lions aversion to the subject that had been treated.
The Christian woman or child, it will be observed, who was to form the _corpus vile_ of these ingenious experiments, was not considered, except, indeed, as the fisherman considers the mussel or the sand-worm on his hook.
Under an arch by themselves, and not far from the great gateway where the guards, their lances in hand, could be seen pacing up and down, sat two women.

The contrast in the appearance of this pair was very striking.

One, who could not have been much more than twenty years of age, was a Jewess, too thin-faced for beauty, but with dark and lovely eyes, and bearing in every limb and feature the stamp of noble blood.
She was Rachel, the widow of Demas, a Graeco-Syrian, and only child of the high-born Jew Benoni, one of the richest merchants in Tyre.

The other was a woman of remarkable aspect, apparently about forty years of age.