Labda, an old slave, entered, carrying in her hand a metallic lamp.
"Nurse, I'm afraid! Don't take the lamp away...."
The old woman placed the lamp in a stone niche above the head of Julian.
"Can you not sleep? You are not in pain? Are you hungry? That old sinner Mardonius always keeps you fasting. I've brought you cakes of honey. They're good.... Taste!"
Making Julian eat was the favourite occupation of Labda; but she dared not indulge in it by day--dreading the severe Mardonius--and so brought her delicacies mysteriously under cover of night. Labda, who was purblind and could scarcely drag her limbs along, always wore the black religious habit. Although a devout Christian, she was regarded as being in reality a Thessalian sorceress. The grimmest superstitions, old and new, fused in her brain into a strange religion not far removed from madness. She mingled prayers with spells, Olympian gods with demons, Christian rites with the black arts. Her body was behung with crosses, and amulets carved out of the bones of the dead; and scapularies, containing the ashes of martyrs, swung from her shoulders. The old woman felt for Julian a pious affection, regarding him as the sole and legitimate successor of Constantine the Great, and holding Constantius, the reigning Emperor, a murderer and a usurper.
Labda knew better than anybody the family tree and traditions of the race of the Flavii. She remembered the grandfather of Julian, Constantius Chlorus. The murderous mysteries of the Court lingered on, ineffaceable, in her memory; and many a time at night would she tell them to Julian, keeping nothing back, so that he, at the narrative of events which his childish brain could not yet comprehend, felt his heart gripped by fear and indignation. With dull eyes, in a low monotonous listless sing-song, Labda, looking like one of the Fates, would recite these gruesome epic tales of a few years ago, as if they had been so many legends of remotest antiquity.
Placing the lamp in a stone niche, Labda blessed Julian, with a sign of the cross; ascertained that the amulet of amber was safe on his breast, and, pronouncing some charms to exorcise ill spirits, vanished.
A heavy half-slumber fell upon Julian. It was warm; great drops of rain, descending in silence as into the bottom of a sonorous vessel, lulled him into languor. He knew not whether he was awake or asleep; whether it was the breathing of the wind or Labda which was murmuring at his ear the terrible secrets of his family. All that he had learnt from her, and all that he had seen in infancy, fused into a single fearful dream.