For here was no rude soldier, nor swollen boxer, but a youth merely--a youth, slender and beautiful, fair-haired, and of a fair complexion.

His loins were girt with a slave's tunic.

Pallid were his young features; his limbs wasted with hunger and toil; his eyes blood-streaked as those of the deer when the dogs close upon its tender life.
'And looking down upon the huddled priest, fallen in his blood upon the dust, he peered long into the dead face, as though he beheld it for the first time.

Shudders ran through him; Quintus listened to hear him weep or moan.

But at the last, he lifted his head, fiercely straightening his limbs like one who reminds himself of black fate, and things not to be undone.
And turning to the multitude, he made a sign.