Whatever thoughts the rich and careless grace of her attire might have raised in his mind, it had certainly not given his innate Greek good taste the inclination to laugh and weep at once, which he felt at this specimen of the tasteless fashion of an artificial and decaying civilisation.

Her gown was stuffed out behind in a fashion which provoked from the dirty boys who lay about the steps, gambling for pistachios on their fingers, the same comments with which St.Clement had upbraided from the pulpit the Alexandrian ladies of his day.

The said gown of white silk was bedizened, from waist to ankle, with certain mysterious red and green figures at least a foot long, which Philammon gradually discovered to be a representation, in the very lowest and ugliest style of fallen art, of Dives and Lazarus; while down her back hung, upon a bright blue shawl, edged with embroidered crosses, Job sitting, potsherd in hand, surrounded by his three friends--a memorial, the old priest whispered, of a pilgrimage which she had taken a year or two before, to Arabia, to see and kiss the identical dunghill on which the patriarch had sat.
Round her neck hung, by one of half a dozen necklaces, a manuscript of the Gospels, gilt-edged and clasped with jewels; the lofty diadem of pearls on the head carried in front a large gold cross; while above and around it her hair, stiffened with pomatum, was frizzled out half a foot from a wilderness of plaits and curls, which must have cost some hapless slave-girl an hour's work, and perhaps more than one scolding, that very morning.
Meekly, with simpering face and downcast eyes, and now and then a penitent sigh and shake of the head and pressure of her hand on her jewelled bosom, the fair penitent was proceeding up the steps, when she caught sight of the priest and the monk, and turning to them with an obeisance of the deepest humility, entreated to be allowed to kiss the hem of their garments.
'You had far better, madam,' said Philammon, bluntly enough, 'kiss the hem of your own.

You carry two lessons there which you do not seem to have learnt yet.' In an instant her face flashed up into pride and fury.

'I asked for your blessing, and not for a sermon.