“Like Hui, the cook’s fat poodle, beside a young lion,” thought she to herself, as she noted the bustling step of the one and the independent and elastic gait of the other.  She felt irresistibly tempted to mimic the older man, but this audacious impulse was soon quelled for scarcely had the guide explained to the Roman that it was here that those pious recluses had their cells who served the god in voluntary captivity, as being consecrated to Serapis, and that they received their food through those windows—­here he pointed upwards with his staff when suddenly a shutter, which the cicerone of this ill-matched pair had touched with his stick, flew open with as much force and haste as if a violent gust of wind had caught it, and flung it back against the wall.—­And no less suddenly a man’s head-of ferocious aspect and surrounded by a shock of gray hair like a lion’s mane—­looked out of the window and shouted to him who had knocked, in a deep and somewhat overloud voice.

“If my shutter had been your back, you impudent rascal, your stick would have hit the right thing.  Or if I had a cudgel between my teeth instead of a tongue, I would exercise it on you till it was as tired as that of a preacher who has threshed his empty straw to his congregation for three mortal hours.  Scarcely is the sun risen when we are plagued by the parasitical and inquisitive mob.  Why! they will rouse us at midnight next, and throw stones at our rotten old shutters.  The effects of my last greeting lasted you for three weeks—­to-day’s I hope may act a little longer.  You, gentlemen there, listen to me.  Just as the raven follows an army to batten on the dead, so that fellow there stalks on in front of strangers in order to empty their pockets—­and you, who call yourself an interpreter, and in learning Greek have forgotten the little Egyptian you ever knew, mark this:  When you have to guide strangers take them to see the Sphinx, or to consult the Apis in the temple of Ptah, or lead them to the king’s beast-garden at Alexandria, or the taverns at Hanopus, but don’t bring them here, for we are neither pheasants, nor flute-playing women, nor miraculous beasts, who take a pleasure in being stared at.  You, gentlemen, ought to choose a better guide than this chatter-mag that keeps up its perpetual rattle when once you set it going.  As to yourselves I will tell you one thing:  Inquisitive eyes are intrusive company, and every prudent house holder guards himself against them by keeping his door shut.”

Irene shrank back and flattened herself against the pilaster which concealed her, for the shutter closed again with a slam, the recluse pulling it to with a rope attached to its outer edge, and he was hidden from the gaze of the strangers; but only for an instant, for the rusty hinges on which the shutter was hanging were not strong enough to bear such violent treatment, and slowly giving way it was about to fall.  The blustering hermit stretched out an arm to support it and save it; but it was heavy, and his efforts would not have succeeded had not the young man in Roman dress given his assistance and lifted up the shutter with his hand and shoulder, without any effort, as if it were made of willow laths instead of strong planks.