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ANTONINA
OR, THE FALL OF ROME
by WILKIE COLLINS
PREFACE
In preparing to compose a fiction founded on history, the writer of
these pages thought it no necessary requisite of such a work that the
principal characters appearing in it should be drawn from the historical
personages of the period. On the contrary, he felt that some very
weighty objections attached to this plan of composition. He knew well
that it obliged a writer to add largely from invention to what was
actually known--to fill in with the colouring of romantic fancy the bare
outline of historic fact--and thus to place the novelist's fiction in
what he could not but consider most unfavourable contrast to the
historian's truth. He was further by no means convinced that any story
in which historical characters supplied the main agents, could be
preserved in its fit unity of design and restrained within its due
limits of development, without some falsification or confusion of
historical dates--a species of poetical licence of which he felt no
disposition to avail himself, as it was his main anxiety to make his
plot invariably arise and proceed out of the great events of the era
exactly in the order in which they occurred.
Influenced, therefore, by these considerations, he thought that by
forming all his principal characters from imagination, he should be able
to mould them as he pleased to the main necessities of the story; to
display them, without any impropriety, as influenced in whatever manner
appeared most strikingly interesting by its minor incidents; and
further, to make them, on all occasions, without trammel or hindrance,
the practical exponents of the spirit of the age, of all the various
historical illustrations of the period, which the Author's researches
among conflicting but equally important authorities had enabled him to
garner up, while, at the same time, the appearance of verisimilitude
necessary to an historical romance might, he imagined, be successfully
preserved by the occasional introduction of the living characters of the
era, in those portions of the plot comprising events with which they had
been remarkably connected.
On this plan the recent work has been produced.
To the fictitious characters alone is committed the task of representing
the spirit of the age. The Roman emperor, Honorius, and the Gothic king,
Alaric, mix but little personally in the business of the story--only
appearing in such events, and acting under such circumstances, as the
records of history strictly authorise; but exact truth in respect to
time, place, and circumstance is observed in every historical event
introduced in the plot, from the period of the march of the Gothic
invaders over the Alps to the close of the first barbarian blockade of
Rome.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER 1. GOISVINTHA.
CHAPTER 2. THE COURT.
CHAPTER 3. ROME.
CHAPTER 4. THE CHURCH.
CHAPTER 5. ANTONINA.
CHAPTER 6. AN APPRENTICESHIP TO THE TEMPLE.
CHAPTER 7. THE BED-CHAMBER.
CHAPTER 8. THE GOTHS.
CHAPTER 9. THE TWO INTERVIEWS.
CHAPTER 10. THE RIFT IN THE WALL.
CHAPTER 11. GOISVINTHA'S RETURN.
CHAPTER 12. THE PASSAGE OF THE WALL.
CHAPTER 13. THE HOUSE IN THE SUBURBS.
CHAPTER 14. THE FAMINE.
CHAPTER 15. THE CITY AND THE GODS.
CHAPTER 16. LOVE MEETINGS.
CHAPTER 17. THE HUNS.
CHAPTER 18. THE FARM-HOUSE.
CHAPTER 19. THE GUARDIAN RESTORED.
CHAPTER 20. THE BREACH REPASSED.
CHAPTER 21. FATHER AND CHILD.
CHAPTER 22. THE BANQUET OF FAMINE.
CHAPTER 23. THE LAST EFFORTS OF THE BESIEGED.
CHAPTER 24. THE GRAVE AND THE CAMP.
CHAPTER 25. THE TEMPLE AND THE CHURCH.
CHAPTER 26. RETRIBUTION.
CHAPTER 27. THE VIGIL OF HOPE.
THE CONCLUSION. 'UBI THESAURUS IBI COR.'
CHAPTER 1. GOISVINTHA.
The mountains forming the range of Alps which border on the north-
eastern confines of Italy, were, in the autumn of the year 408, already
furrowed in numerous directions by the tracks of the invading forces of
those northern nations generally comprised under the appellation of
Goths.
In some places these tracks were denoted on either side by fallen trees,
and occasionally assumed, when half obliterated by the ravages of
storms, the appearance of desolate and irregular marshes. In other
places they were less palpable. Here, the temporary path was entirely
hidden by the incursions of a swollen torrent; there, it was faintly
perceptible in occasional patches of soft ground, or partly traceable by
fragments of abandoned armour, skeletons of horses and men, and remnants
of the rude bridges which had once served for passage across a river or
transit over a precipice.
Among the rocks of the topmost of the range of mountains immediately
overhanging the plains of Italy, and presenting the last barrier to the
exertions of a traveller or the march of an invader, there lay, at the
beginning of the fifth century, a little lake. Bounded on three sides
by precipices, its narrow banks barren of verdure or habitations, and
its dark and stagnant waters brightened but rarely by the presence of
the lively sunlight, this solitary spot--at all times mournful--
presented, on the autumn of the day when our story commences, an aspect
of desolation at once dismal to the eye and oppressive to the heart.
It was near noon; but no sun appeared in the heaven. The dull clouds,
monotonous in colour and form, hid all beauty in the firmament, and shed
heavy darkness on the earth. Dense, stagnant vapours clung to the
mountain summits; from the drooping trees dead leaves and rotten
branches sunk, at intervals, on the oozy soil, or whirled over the
gloomy precipice; and a small steady rain fell, slow and unintermitting,
upon the deserts around. Standing upon the path which armies had once
trodden, and which armies were still destined to tread, and looking
towards the solitary lake, you heard, at first, no sound but the regular
dripping of the rain-drops from rock to rock; you saw no prospect but
the motionless waters at your feet, and the dusky crags which shadowed
them from above. When, however, impressed by the mysterious loneliness
of the place, the eye grew more penetrating and the ear more attentive,
a cavern became apparent in the precipices round the lake; and, in the
intervals of the heavy rain-drops, were faintly perceptible the sounds
of a human voice.
The mouth of the cavern was partly concealed by a large stone, on which
were piled some masses of rotten brushwood, as if for the purpose of
protecting any inhabitant it might contain from the coldness of the
atmosphere without. Placed at the eastward boundary of the lake, this
strange place of refuge commanded a view not only of the rugged path
immediately below it, but of a large plot of level ground at a short
distance to the west, which overhung a second and lower range of rocks.
From this spot might be seen far beneath, on days when the atmosphere
was clear, the olive grounds that clothed the mountain's base, and
beyond, stretching away to the distant horizon, the plains of fated
Italy, whose destiny of defeat and shame was now hastening to its dark
and fearful accomplishment.
The cavern, within, was low and irregular in form. From its rugged
walls the damp oozed forth upon its floor of decayed moss. Lizards and
noisome animals had tenanted its comfortless recesses undisturbed, until
the period we have just described, when their miserable rights were
infringed on for the first time by human intruders.
A woman crouched near the entrance of the place. More within, on the
driest part of the ground, lay a child asleep. Between them were
scattered some withered branches and decayed leaves, which were arranged
as if to form a fire. In many parts this scanty collection of fuel was
slightly blackened; but, wetted as it was by the rain, all efforts to
light it permanently had evidently been fruitless.
The woman's head was bent forwards, and her face, hid in her hands,
rested on her knees. At intervals she muttered to herself in a hoarse,
moaning voice. A portion of her scanty clothing had been removed to
cover the child. What remained on her was composed, partly of skins of
animals, partly of coarse cotton cloth. In many places this miserable
dress was marked with blood, and her long, flaxen hair bore upon its
dishevelled locks the same ominous and repulsive stain.
The child seemed scarcely four years of age, and showed on his pale,
thin face all the peculiarities of his Gothic origin. His features
seemed to have been once beautiful, both in expression and form; but a
deep wound, extending the whole length of his cheek, had now deformed
him for ever. He shivered and trembled in his sleep, and every now and
then mechanically stretched forth his little arms towards the dead cold
branches that were scattered before him.
Suddenly a large stone became detached from the rock in a distant part
of the cavern, and fell noisily to the ground. At this sound he woke
with a scream--raised himself--endeavoured to advance towards the woman,
and staggered backward against the side of the cave. A second wound in
the leg had wreaked that destruction on his vigour which the first had
effected on his beauty. He was a cripple.
At the instant of his awakening the woman had started up. She now
raised him from the ground, and taking some herbs from her bosom,
applied them to his wounded cheek. By this action her dress became
discomposed: it was stiff at the top with coagulated blood, which had
evidently flowed from a cut in her neck.
All her attempts to compose the child were in vain; he moaned and wept
piteously, muttering at intervals his disjointed exclamations of
impatience at the coldness of the place and the agony of his recent
wounds. Speechless and tearless the wretched woman looked vacantly down
on his face. There was little difficulty in discerning from that fixed,
distracted gaze the nature of the tie that bound the mourning woman to
the suffering boy. The expression of rigid and awful despair that
lowered in her fixed, gloomy eyes, the livid paleness that discoloured
her compressed lips, the spasms that shook her firm, commanding form,
mutely expressing in the divine eloquence of human emotion that between
the solitary pair there existed the most intimate of earth's
relationships--the connection of mother and child.
For some time no change occurred in the woman's demeanour. At last, as
if struck by some sudden suspicion, she rose, and clasping the child in
one arm, displaced with the other the brushwood at the entrance of her
place of refuge, cautiously looking forth on all that the mists left
visible of the western landscape. After a short survey she drew back as
if reassured by the unbroken solitude of the place, and turning towards
the lake, looked down upon the black waters at her feet.
'Night has succeeded to night,' she muttered gloomily, 'and has brought
no succour to my body, and no hope to my heart! Mile on mile have I
journeyed, and danger is still behind, and loneliness for ever before.
The shadow of death deepens over the boy; the burden of anguish grows
weightier than I can bear. For me, friends are murdered, defenders are
distant, possessions are lost. The God of the Christian priests has
abandoned us to danger and deserted us in woe. It is for me to end the
struggle for us both. Our last refuge has been in this place--our
sepulchre shall be here as well!'
With one last look at the cold and comfortless sky, she advanced to the
very edge of the lake's precipitous bank. Already the child was raised
in her arms, and her body bent to accomplish successfully the fatal
spring, when a sound in the east--faint, distant, and fugitive--caught
her ear. In an instant her eye brightened, her chest heaved, her cheek
flushed. She exerted the last relics of her wasted strength to gain a
prominent position upon a ledge of the rocks behind her, and waited in
an agony of expectation for a repetition of that magic sound.
In a moment more she heard it again--for the child, stupefied with
terror at the action that had accompanied her determination to plunge
with him into the lake, now kept silence, and she could listen
undisturbed. To unpractised ears the sound that so entranced her would
have been scarcely audible. Even the experienced traveller would have
thought it nothing more than the echo of a fallen stone among the rocks
in the eastward distance. But to her it was no unimportant sound, for
it gave the welcome signal of deliverance and delight.
As the hour wore on, it came nearer and nearer, tossed about by the
sportive echoes, and now clearly betraying that its origin was, as she
had at first divined, the note of the Gothic trumpet. Soon the distant
music ceased, and was succeeded by another sound, low and rumbling, as
of an earthquake afar off or a rising thunderstorm, and changing, ere
long, to a harsh confused noise, like the rustling of a mighty wind
through whole forests of brushwood.
At this instant the woman lost all command over herself; her former
patience and caution deserted her; reckless of danger, she placed the
child upon the ledge on which she had been standing; and, though
trembling in every limb, succeeded in mounting so much higher on the
crag as to gain a fissure near the top of the rock, which commanded an
uninterrupted view of the vast tracts of uneven ground leading in an
easterly direction to the next range of precipices and ravines.
One after another the long minutes glided on, and, though much was still
audible, nothing was yet to be seen. At length the shrill sound of the
trumpet again rang through the dull, misty air, and the next instant the
advance guard of an army of Goths emerged from the distant woods.
Then, after an interval, the multitudes of the main body thronged
through every outlet in the trees, and spread in dusky masses over the
desert ground that lay between the woods and the rocks about the borders
of the lake. The front ranks halted, as if to communicate with the
crowds of the rearguard and the stragglers among the baggage waggons,
who still poured forth, apparently in interminable hosts, from the
concealment of the distant trees. The advanced troops, evidently with
the intention of examining the roads, still marched rapidly on, until
they gained the foot of the ascent leading to the crags to which the
woman still clung, and from which, with eager attention, she still
watched their movements.
Placed in a situation of the extremest peril, her strength was her only
preservative against the danger of slipping from her high and narrow
elevation. Hitherto the moral excitement of expectation had given her
the physical power necessary to maintain her position; but just as the
leaders of the guard arrived at the cavern, her over-wrought energies
suddenly deserted her; her hands relaxed their grasp; she tottered, and
would have sunk backwards to instant destruction, had not the skins
wrapped about her bosom and waist become entangled with a point of one
of the jagged rocks immediately around her. Fortunately--for she could
utter no cry--the troops halted at this instant to enable their horses
to gain breath. Two among them at once perceived her position and
detected her nation. They mounted the rocks; and, while one possessed
himself of the child, the other succeeded in rescuing the mother and
bearing her safely to the ground.
The snorting of horses, the clashing of weapons, the confusion of loud,
rough voices, which now startled the native silence of the solitary
lake, and which would have bewildered and overwhelmed most persons in
the woman's exhausted condition, seemed, on the contrary, to reassure
her feelings and reanimate her powers. She disengaged herself from her
preserver's support, and taking her child in her arms, advanced towards
a man of gigantic stature, whose rich armour sufficiently announced that
his position in the army was one of command.
'I am Goisvintha,' said she, in a firm, calm voice--'sister to
Hermanric. I have escaped from the massacre of the hostages of Aquileia
with one child. Is my brother with the army of the king?'
This declaration produced a marked change in the bystanders. The looks
of indifference or curiosity which they had at first cast on the
fugitive, changed to the liveliest expression of wonder and respect.
The chieftain whom she had addressed raised the visor of his helmet so
as to uncover his face, answered her question in the affirmative, and
ordered two soldiers to conduct her to the temporary encampment of the
main army in the rear. As she turned to depart, an old man advanced,
leaning on his long, heavy sword, and accosted her thus--
'I am Withimer, whose daughter was left hostage with the Romans in
Aquileia. Is she of the slain or of the escaped?'
'Her bones rot under the city walls,' was the answer. 'The Romans made
of her a feast for the dogs.'
No word or tear escaped the old warrior. He turned in the direction of
Italy; but, as he looked downwards towards the plains, his brow lowered,
and his hands tightened mechanically round the hilt of his enormous
weapon.
The same gloomy question was propounded to Goisvintha by the two men who
guided her to the army that had been asked by their aged comrade. It
received the same terrible answer, which was borne with the same stern
composure, and followed by the same ominous glance in the direction of
Italy, as in the instance of the veteran Withimer.
Leading the horse that carried the exhausted woman with the utmost care,
and yet with wonderful rapidity, down the paths which they had so
recently ascended, the men in a short space of time reached the place
where the army had halted, and displayed to Goisvintha, in all the
majesty of numbers and repose, the vast martial assemblage of the
warriors of the North.
No brightness gleamed from their armour; no banners waved over their
heads; no music sounded among their ranks. Backed by the dreary woods,
which still disgorged unceasing additions to the warlike multitude
already encamped; surrounded by the desolate crags which showed dim,
wild, and majestic through the darkness of the mist; covered with the
dusky clouds which hovered motionless over the barren mountain tops, and
poured their stormy waters on the uncultivated plains--all that the
appearance of the Goths had of solemnity in itself was in awful harmony
with the cold and mournful aspect that the face of Nature had assumed.
Silent--menacing--dark,--the army looked the fit embodiment of its
leader's tremendous purpose--the subjugation of Rome.
Conducting Goisvintha quickly through the front files of warriors, her
guides, pausing at a spot of ground which shelved upwards at right
angles with the main road from the woods, desired her to dismount; and
pointing to the group that occupied the place, said, 'Yonder is Alaric
the king, and with him is Hermanric thy brother.'
At whatever point of view it could have been regarded, the assemblage of
persons thus indicated to Goisvintha must have arrested inattention
itself. Near a confused mass of weapons, scattered on the ground,
reclined a group of warriors apparently listening to the low, muttered
conversation of three men of great age, who rose above them, seated on
pieces of rock, and whose long white hair, rough skin dresses, and lean
tottering forms appeared in strong contrast with the iron-clad and
gigantic figures of their auditors beneath. Above the old men, on the
highroad, was one of Alaric's waggons; and on the heaps of baggage piled
against its clumsy wheels had been chosen resting-place of the future
conqueror of Rome. The top of the vehicle seemed absolutely teeming
with a living burden. Perched in every available nook and corner were
women and children of all ages, and weapons and live stock of all
varieties. Now, a child--lively, mischievous, inquisitive--peered forth
over the head of a battering-ram. Now, a lean, hungry sheep advanced his
inquiring nostrils sadly to the open air, and displayed by the movement
the head of a withered old woman pillowed on his woolly flanks. Here,
appeared a young girl struggling, half entombed in shields. There,
gasped an emaciated camp-follower, nearly suffocated in heaps of furs.
The whole scene, with its background of great woods, drenched in a
vapour of misty rain, with its striking contrasts at one point and its
solemn harmonies at another, presented a vast combination of objects
that either startled or awed--a gloomy conjunction of the menacing and
the sublime.
Bidding Goisvintha wait near the waggon, one of her conductors
approached and motioned aside a young man standing near the king. As
the warrior rose to obey the demand, he displayed, with all the physical
advantages of his race, and ease and elasticity of movement unusual
among the men of his nation. At the instant when he joined the soldier
who had accosted him, his face was partially concealed by an immense
helmet, crowned with a boar's head, the mouth of which, forced open at
death, gaped wide, as if still raging for prey. But the man had
scarcely stated his errand, when he started violently, removed the grim
appendage of war, and hastened bare-headed to the side of the waggon
where Goisvintha awaited his approach.
The instant he was beheld by the woman, she hastened to meet him; placed
the wounded child in his arms, and greeted him with these words:--
'Your brother served in the armies of Rome when our people were at peace
with the Empire. Of his household and his possessions this is all that
the Romans have left!'
She ceased, and for an instant the brother and sister regarded each
other in touching and expressive silence. Though, in addition to the
general characteristics of country, the countenances of the two
naturally bore the more particular evidences of community of blood, all
resemblance between them at this instant--so wonderful is the power of
expression over feature--had utterly vanished. The face and manner of
the young man (he had numbered only twenty years) expressed a deep
sorrow, manly in its stern tranquility, sincere in its perfect innocence
of display. As he looked on the child, his blue eyes--bright, piercing,
and lively--softened like a woman's; his lips, hardly hidden by his
short beard, closed and quivered; and his chest heaved under the armour
that lay upon its noble proportions. There was in this simple,
speechless, tearless melancholy--this exquisite consideration of
triumphant strength for suffering weakness--something almost sublime;
opposed as it was to the emotions of malignity and despair that appeared
in Goisvintha's features. The ferocity that gleamed from her dilated,
glaring eyes, the sinister markings that appeared round her pale and
parted lips, the swelling of the large veins, drawn to their extremest
point of tension on her lofty forehead, so distorted her countenance,
that the brother and sister, as they stood together, seemed in
expression to have changed sexes for the moment. From the warrior came
pity for the sufferer; from the mother, indignation for the offence.
Arousing himself from his melancholy contemplation of the child, and as
yet answering not a word to Goisvintha, Hermanric mounted the waggon,
and placing the last of his sister's offspring in the arms of a decrepid
old woman, who sat brooding over some bundles of herbs spread out upon
her lap, addressed her thus:--
'These wounds are from the Romans. Revive the child, and you shall be
rewarded from the spoils of Rome.'
'Ha! ha! ha!' chuckled the crone; 'Hermanric is an illustrious warrior,
and shall be obeyed. Hermanric is great, for his arm can slay; but
Brunechild is greater than he, for her cunning can cure!'
As if anxious to verify this boast before the warrior's eyes, the old
woman immediately began the preparation of the necessary dressings from
her store of herbs; but Hermanric waited not to be a witness of her
skill. With one final look at the pale, exhausted child, he slowly
descended from the waggon, and approaching Goisvintha, drew her towards
a sheltered position near the ponderous vehicle. Here he seated himself
by her side, prepared to listen with the deepest attention to her
recital of the scenes of terror and suffering through which she had so
recently passed.
'You,' she began, 'born while our nation was at peace; transported from
the field of war to those distant provinces where tranquility still
prevailed; preserved throughout your childhood from the chances of
battle; advanced to the army in your youth, only when its toils are past
and its triumphs are already at hand--you alone have escaped the
miseries of our people, to partake in the glory of their approaching
revenge.
'Hardly had a year passed since you had been removed from the
settlements of the Goths when I wedded Priulf. The race of triflers to
whom he was then allied, spite of their Roman haughtiness, deferred to
him in their councils, and confessed among their legions that he was
brave. I saw myself with joy the wife of a warrior of renown; I
believed, in my pride, that I was destined to be the mother of a race of
heroes; when suddenly there came news to us that the Emperor Theodosius
was dead. Then followed anarchy among the people of the soil, and
outrages on the liberties of their allies, the Goths. Ere long the call
to arms arose among our nation. Soon our waggons of war were rolled
across the frozen Danube; our soldiers quitted the Roman camp; our
husbandmen took their weapons from their cottage walls; we that were
women prepared with our children to follow our husbands to the field;
and Alaric, the king, came forth as the leader of our hosts.
'We marched upon the territories of the Greeks. But how shall I tell
you of the events of those years of war that followed our invasion; of
the glory of our victories; of the hardships of our defences; of the
miseries of our retreats; of the hunger that we vanquished; of the
diseases that we endured; of the shameful peace that was finally
ratified, against the wishes of our king! How shall I tell of all this,
when my thoughts are on the massacre from which I have just escaped--
when these first evils, though once remembered in anguish, are, even
now, forgotten in the superior horrors that ensued!
'The truce was made. Alaric departed with the remnant of his army, and
encamped at AEmona, on the confines of that land which he had already
invaded, and which he is no prepared to conquer. Between our king and
Stilicho, the general of the Romans, passed many messages, for the
leaders disputed on the terms of the peace that should be finally
ordained. Meanwhile, as an earnest of the Gothic faith, bands of our
warriors, and among them Priulf, were despatched into Italy to be allies
once more of the legions of Rome, and with them they took their wives
and their children, to be detained as hostages in the cities throughout
the land.
'I and my children were conducted to Aquileia. In a dwelling within the
city we were lodged with our possessions. It was night when I took
leave of Priulf, my husband, at the gates. I watched him as he departed
with the army, and, when the darkness hid him from my eyes, I re-entered
the town; from which I am the only woman of our nation who has escaped
alive.'
As she pronounced these last words, Goisvintha's manner, which had
hitherto been calm and collected, began to change: she paused abruptly
in her narrative, her head sunk upon her breast, her frame quivered as
if convulsed with violent agony. When she turned towards Hermanric
after an interval of silence to address him again, the same malignant
expression lowered over her countenance that had appeared on it when she
presented to him her wounded child; her voice became broken, hoarse, and
unfeminine; and pressing closely to the young man's side, she laid her
trembling fingers on his arm, as if to bespeak his most undivided
attention.
'Time grew on,' she continued, 'and still there came no tidings that the
peace was finally secured. We, that were hostages, lived separate from
the people of the town; for we felt enmity towards each other even then.
In my captivity there was no employment for me but patience--no pursuit
but hope. Alone with my children, I was wont to look forth over the sea
towards the camp of our king; but day succeeded to day, and his warriors
appeared not on the plains; nor did Priulf return with the legions to
encamp before the gates of the town. So I mourned in my loneliness; for
my heart yearned towards the homes of my people; I longed once more to
look upon my husband's face, and to behold again the ranks of our
warriors, and the majesty of their battle array.
'But already, when the great day of despair was quickly drawing near, a
bitter outrage was preparing for me alone. The men who had hitherto
watched us were changed, and of the number of the new guards was one who
cast on me the eyes of lust. Night after night he poured his entreaties
into my unwilling ear; for, in his vanity and shamelessness, he believed
that I, who was Gothic and the wife of a Goth, might be won by him whose
parentage was but Roman! Soon from prayers he rose to threats; and one
night, appearing before me with smiles, he cried out that Stilicho,
whose desire was to make peace with the Goths, had suffered, for his
devotion to our people, the penalty of death; that a time of ruin was
approaching for us all, and that he alone--whom I despised--could
preserve me from the anger of Rome. As he ceased he approached me; but
I, who had been in many battle-fields, felt no dread at the prospect of
war, and I spurned him with laughter from my presence.
'Then, for a few nights more, my enemy approached me not again. Until
one evening, as I sat on the terrace before the house, with the child
that you have beheld, a helmet-crest suddenly fell at my feet, and a
voice cried to me from the garden beneath: 'Priulf thy husband has been
slain in a quarrel by the soldiers of Rome! Already the legions with
whom he served are on their way to the town; for a massacre of the
hostages is ordained. Speak but the word, and I can save thee even
yet!'
'I looked on the crest. It was bloody, and it was his! For an instant
my heart writhed within me as I thought on my warrior whom I had loved!
Then, as I heard the messenger of death retire, cursing, from his
lurking-place in the garden, I recollected that now my children had none
but their mother to defend them, and that peril was preparing for them
from the enemies of their race. Besides the little one in my arms, I
had two that were sleeping in the house. As I looked round, bewildered
and in despair, to see if a chance were left us to escape, there rang
through the evening stillness the sound of a trumpet, and the tramp of
armed men was audible in the street beneath. Then, from all quarters of
the town rose, as one sudden sound, the shrieks of women and the yells
of men. Already, as I rushed towards my children's beds, the fiends of
Rome had mounted the stairs, and waved in bloody triumph their reeking
swords! I gained the steps; and, as I looked up, they flung down at me
the body of my youngest child. O Hermanric! Hermanric! it was the most
beautiful and the most beloved! What the priests say that God should be
to us, that, the fairest one of my offspring, was to me! As I saw it
mutilated and dead--I, who but an hour before had hushed it on my bosom
to rest!--my courage forsook me, and when the murderers advanced on me I
staggered and fell. I felt the sword-point enter my neck; I saw the
dagger gleam over the child in my arms; I heard the death-shriek of the
last victim above; and then my senses failed me, and I could listen and
move no more!
'Long must I have lain motionless at the foot of those fatal stairs; for
when I awoke from my trance the noises in the city were hushed, and from
her place in the firmament the moon shone softly into the deserted
house. I listened, to be certain that I was alone with my murdered
children. No sound was in the dwelling; the assassins had departed,
believing that their labour of blood was ended when I fell beneath their
swords; and I was able to crawl forth in security, and to look my last
upon my offspring that the Romans had slain. The child that I held to
my breast still breathed. I stanched with some fragments of my garment
the wounds that he had received, and laying him gently by the stairs--in
the moonlight, so that I might see him when he moved--I groped in the
shadow of the wall for my first murdered and my last born; for that
youngest and fairest one of my offspring whom they had slaughtered
before my eyes! When I touched the corpse, it was wet with blood; I
felt its face, and it was cold beneath my hands; I raised its body in my
arms, and its limbs already were rigid in death! Then I thought of the
eldest child, who lay dead in the chamber above. But my strength was
failing me fast. I had an infant who might yet be preserved; and I knew
that if morning dawned on me in the house, all chances of escape were
lost for ever. So, though my heart was cold within me at leaving my
child's corpse to the mercy of the Romans, I took up the dead and the
wounded one in my arms, and went forth into the garden, and thence
towards the seaward quarter of the town.
'I passed through the forsaken streets. Sometimes I stumbled against
the body of a child--sometimes the moonlight showed me the death-pale
face of some woman of my nation whom I had loved, stretched upward to
the sky; but I still advanced until I gained the wall of the town, and
heard on the other side the waters of the river running onward to the
Port of Aquileia and the sea.
'I looked around. The gates I knew were guarded and closed. By the
wall was the only prospect of escape; but its top was high and its sides
were smooth when I felt them with my hands. Despairing and wearied, I
laid my burdens down where they were hidden by the shade, and walked
forward a few paces, for to remain still was a torment that I could not
endure. At a short distance I saw a soldier sleeping against the wall
of a house. By his side was a ladder placed against the window. As I
looked up I beheld the head of a corpse resting on its top. The victim
must have been lately slain, for her blood still dripped slowly down
into an empty wine-pot that stood within the soldier's reach. When I
saw the ladder, hope revived within me. I removed it to the wall--I
mounted, and laid my dead child on the great stones at its top--I
returned, and placed my wounded boy by the corpse. Slowly, and with
many efforts, I dragged the ladder upwards, until from its own weight
one end fell to the ground on the other side. As I had risen so I
descended. In the sand of the river-bank I scraped a hole, and buried
there the corpse of the infant; for I could carry the weight of two no
longer. Then with my wounded child I reached some caverns that lay
onward near the seashore. There throughout the next day I lay hidden--
alone with my sufferings of body and my affliction of heart--until the
night came on, when I set forth on my journey to the mountains; for I
knew that at Aemona, in the camp of the warriors of my people, lay the
only refuge that was left to me on earth. Feebly and slowly, hiding by
day an d travelling by night, I kept on my way until I gained that lake
among the rocks, where the guards of the army came forward and rescued
me from death.'
She ceased. Throughout the latter portion of her narrative her
demeanour had been calm and sad; and as she dwelt, with the painful
industry of grief, over each minute circumstance connected with the
bereavements she had sustained, her voice softened to those accents of
quiet mournfulness, which make impressive the most simple words, and
render musical the most unsteady tones. It seemed as if those tenderer
and kinder emotions, which the attractions of her offspring had once
generated in her character, had at the bidding of memory become
revivified in her manner while she lingered over the recital of their
deaths. For a brief space of time she looked fixedly and anxiously upon
the countenance of Hermanric, which was half averted from her, and
expressed a fierce and revengeful gloom that sat unnaturally on it noble
lineaments. Then turning from him, she buried her face in her hands,
and made no effort more to attract him to attention or incite him to
reply.
This solemn silence kept by the bereaved woman and the brooding man had
lasted but a few minutes, when a harsh, trembling voice was heard from
the top of the waggon, calling at intervals, 'Hermanric! Hermanric!'
At first the young man remained unmoved by those discordant and
repulsive tones. They repeated his name, however, so often and so
perseveringly, that he noticed them ere long; and rising suddenly, as if
impatient of the interruption, advanced towards the side of the waggon
from which the mysterious summons appeared to come.
As he looked up towards the vehicle the voice ceased, and he saw that
the old woman to whom he had confided the child was the person who had
called him so hurriedly but a few moments before. Her tottering body,
clothed in bear-skins, was bent forward over a large triangular shield
of polished brass, on which she leant her lank, shrivelled arms. Her
head shook with a tremulous, palsied action; a leer, half smile, half
grimace, distended her withered lips and lightened her sunken eyes.
Sinister, cringing, repulsive; her face livid with the reflection from
the weapon that was her support, and her figure scarcely human in the
rugged garments that encompassed its gaunt proportions, she seemed a
deformity set up by evil spirits to mock the majesty of the human form--
an embodied satire on all that is most deplorable in infirmity and most
disgusting in age.
The instant she discerned Hermanric, she stretched her body out still
farther over the shield; and pointing to the interior of the waggon,
muttered softly that one fearful and expressive word--dead!
Without waiting for any further explanation, the young Goth mounted the
vehicle, and gaining the old woman's side, saw stretched on her
collection of herbs--beautiful in the sublime and melancholy stillness
of death--the corpse of Goisvintha's last child.
'Is Hermanric wroth?' whined the hag, quailing before the steady,
rebuking glance of the young man. 'When I said that Brunechild was
greater than Hermanric, I lied. It is Hermanric that is most powerful!
See, the dressings were placed on the wounds; and, though the child has
died, shall not the treasures that were promised me be mine? I have
done what I could, but my cunning begins to desert me, for I am old--
old--old! I have seen my generation pass away! Aha! I am old,
Hermanric, I am old!'
When the young warrior looked on the child, he saw that the hag had
spoken truth, and that the victim had died from no fault of hers. Pale
and serene, the countenance of the boy showed how tranquil had been his
death. The dressings had been skilfully composed and carefully applied
to his wounds, but suffering and privation had annihilated the
feebleness of human resistance in their march toward the last dread
goal, and the treachery of Imperial Rome had once more triumphed as was
its wont, and triumphed over a child!
As Hermanric descended with the corpse Goisvintha was the first object
that met his eyes when he alighted on the ground. The mother received
from him the lifeless burden without an exclamation or a tear. That
emanation from her former and kinder self which had been produced by the
closing recital of her sufferings was henceforth, at the signal of her
last child's death, extinguished in her for ever!
'His wounds had crippled him,' said the young man gloomily. 'He could
never have fought with the warriors! Our ancestors slew themselves when
they were no longer vigorous for the fight. It is better that he has
died!'
'Vengeance!' gasped Goisvintha, pressing up closely to his side. 'We
will have vengeance for the massacre of Aquileia! When blood is
streaming in the palaces of Rome, remember my murdered children, and
hasten not to sheathe thy sword!'
At this instant, as if to rouse still further the fierce determination
that appeared already in the face of the young Goth, the voice of Alaric
was heard commanding the army to advance. Hermanric started, and drew
the panting woman after him to the resting-place of the king. There,
armed at all points, and rising, by his superior stature, high above the
throng around him, stood the dreaded captain of the Gothic hosts. His
helmet was raised so as to display his clear blue eyes gleaming over the
multitude around him; he pointed with his sword in the direction of
Italy; and as rank by rank the men started to their arms, and prepared
exultingly for the march, his lips parted with a smile of triumph, and
ere he moved to accompany them he spoke thus:--
'Warriors of the Goths, our halt is a short one among the mountains; but
let not the weary repine, for the glorious resting-place that awaits our
labours is the city of Rome! The curse of Odin, when in the infancy of
our nation he retire before the myriads of the Empire, it is our
privilege to fulfil! That future destruction which he denounced against
Rome, it is ours to effect! Remember your hostages that the Romans have
slain; your possessions that the Romans have seized; your trust that the
Romans have betrayed! Remember that I, your king, have within me that
supernatural impulse which never deceives, and which calls to me in a
voice of encouragement--Advance, and the Empire is thine! Assemble the
warriors, and the City of the World shall be delivered to the conquering
Goths! Let us onward without delay! Our prey awaits us! Our triumph is
near! Our vengeance is at hand!'
He paused; and at that moment the trumpet gave signal for the march.
'Up! up!' cried Hermanric, seizing Goisvintha by the arm, and pointing
to the waggon which had already begun to move; 'make ready for the
journey! I will charge myself with the burial of the child. Yet a few
days and our encampment may be before Aquileia. Be patient, and I will
avenge thee in the palaces of Rome!'
The mighty mass moved. The multitude stretched forth over the barren
ground; and even now the warriors in front of the army might be seen by
those in the rear mounting the last range of passes that lay between the
plains of Italy and the Goths.
CHAPTER 2. THE COURT.
The traveller who so far departs from the ordinary track of tourists in
modern Italy as to visit the city of Ravenna, remembers with
astonishment, as he treads its silent and melancholy streets, and
beholds vineyards and marshes spread over an extent of four miles
between the Adriatic and the town, that this place, now half deserted,
was once the most populous of Roman fortresses; and that where fields
and woods now present themselves to his eyes the fleets of the Empire
once rode securely at anchor, and the merchant of Rome disembarked his
precious cargoes at his warehouse door.
As the power of Rome declined, the Adriatic, by a strange fatality,
began to desert the fortress whose defence it had hitherto secured.
Coeval with the gradual degeneracy of the people was the gradual
withdrawal of the ocean from the city walls; until, at the beginning of
the sixth century, a grove of pines already appeared where the port of
Augustus once existed.
At the period of our story--though the sea had even then receded
perceptibly--the ditches round the walls were yet filled, and the canals
still ran through the city in much the same manner as they intersect
Venice at the present time.
On the morning that we are about to describe, the autumn had advanced
some days since the events mentioned in the preceding chapter. Although
the sun was now high in the eastern horizon, the restlessness produced
by the heat emboldened a few idlers of Ravenna to brave the sultriness
of the atmosphere, in the vain hope of being greeted by a breeze from
the Adriatic as they mounted the seaward ramparts of the town. On
attaining their destined elevation, these sanguine citizens turned their
faces with fruitless and despairing industry towards every point of the
compass, but no breath of air came to reward their perseverance. Nothing
could be more thoroughly suggestive of the undiminished universality of
the heat than the view, in every direction, from the position they then
occupied. The stone houses of the city behind them glowed with a vivid
brightness overpowering to the strongest eyes. The light curtains hung
motionless over the lonely windows. No shadows varied the brilliant
monotony of the walls, or softened the lively glitter on the waters of
the fountains beneath. Not a ripple stirred the surface of the broad
channel, that now replaced the ancient harbour. Not a breath of wind
unfolded the scorching sails of the deserted vessels at the quay. Over
the marshes in the distance hung a hot, quivering mist; and in the
vineyards, near the town, not a leaf waved upon its slender stem. On
the seaward side lay, vast and level, the prospect of the burning sand;
and beyond it the main ocean--waveless, torpid, and suffused in a flood
of fierce brightness--stretched out to the cloudless horizon that closed
the sunbright view.
Within the town, in those streets where the tall houses cast a deep
shadow on the flagstones of the road, the figures of a few slaves might
here and there be seen sleeping against the walls, or gossiping
languidly on the faults of their respective lords. Sometimes an old
beggar might be observed hunting on the well-stocked preserves of his
own body the lively vermin of the South. Sometimes a restless child
crawled from a doorstep to paddle in the stagnant waters of a kennel;
but, with the exception of these doubtful evidences of human industry,
the prevailing characteristic of the few groups of the lowest orders of
the people which appeared in the streets was the most listless and utter
indolence. All that gave splendour to the city at other hours of the
day was at this period hidden from the eye. The elegant courtiers
reclined in their lofty chambers; the guards on duty ensconced
themselves in angles of walls and recesses of porticoes; the graceful
ladies slumbered on perfumed couches in darkened rooms; the gilded
chariots were shut into the carriage-houses; the prancing horses were
confined in the stables; and even the wares in the market-places were
removed from exposure to the sun. It was clear that the luxurious
inhabitants of Ravenna recognised no duties of sufficient importance,
and no pleasures of sufficient attraction, to necessitate the exposure
of their susceptible bodies to the noontide heat.
To give the reader some idea of the manner in which the indolent
patricians of the Court loitered away their noon, and to satisfy, at the
same time, the exigencies attaching to the conduct of this story, it is
requisite to quit the lounging-places of the plebeians in the streets
for the couches of the nobles in the Emperor's palace.
Passing through the massive entrance gates, crossing the vast hall of
the Imperial abode, with its statues, its marbles, and its guards in
attendance, and thence ascending the noble staircase, the first object
that might on this occasion have attracted the observer, when he gained
the approaches to the private apartments, was a door at an extremity of
the corridor, richly carved and standing half open. At this spot were
grouped some fifteen or twenty individuals, who conversed by signs, and
maintained in all their movements the most decorous and complete
silence. Sometimes one of the party stole on tiptoe to the door, and
looked cautiously through, returning almost instantaneously, and
expressing to his next neighbour, by various grimaces, his immense
interest in the sight he had just beheld. Occasionally there came from
this mysterious chamber sounds resembling the cackling of poultry,
varied now and then by a noise like the falling of a shower of small,
light substances upon a hard floor. Whenever these sounds were audible,
the members of the party outside the door looked round upon each other
and smiled--some sarcastically, some triumphantly. A few among these
patient expectants grasped rolls of vellum in their hands; the rest held
nosegays of rare flowers, or supported in their arms small statues and
pictures in mosaic. Of their number, some were painters and poets, some
orators and philosophers, and some statuaries and musicians. Among such
a motley assemblage of professions, remarkable in all ages of the world
for fostering in their votaries the vice of irritability, it may seem
strange that so quiet and orderly a behaviour should exist as that just
described. But it is to be observed that in attending at the palace,
these men of genius made sure at least of outward unanimity among their
ranks, by coming equally prepared with one accomplishment, and equally
animated by one hope: they waited to employ a common agent--flattery; to
attain a common end--gain.
The chamber thus sacred, even from the intrusion of intellectual
inspiration, although richly ornamented, was of no remarkable extent.
At other times the eye might have wandered with delight on the exquisite
plants and flowers, scattered profusely over a noble terrace, to which a
second door in the apartment conducted; but, at the present moment, the
employment of the occupant of the room was of so extraordinary a nature,
that the most attentive observation must have missed all the inferior
characteristics of the place, to settle immediately on its inhabitant
alone.
In the midst of a large flock of poultry, which seemed strangely
misplaced on a floor of marble and under a gilded roof, stood a pale,
thin, debilitated youth, magnificently clothed, and holding in his hand
a silver vase filled with grain, which he ever and anon distributed to
the cackling multitude at his feet. Nothing could be more pitiably
effeminate than the appearance of this young man. His eyes were heavy
and vacant, his forehead low and retiring, his cheeks sallow, and his
form curved as if with a premature old age. An unmeaning smile dilated
his thin, colourless lips; and as he looked down on his strange
favourites, he occasionally whispered to them a few broken expressions
of endearment, almost infantine in their simplicity. His whole soul
seemed to be engrossed by the labour of distributing his grain, and he
followed the different movements of the poultry with an earnestness of
attention which seemed almost idiotic in its ridiculous intensity. If
it be asked, why a person so contemptible as this solitary youth has
been introduced with so much care, and described with so much
minuteness, it must be answered, that, though destined to form no
important figure in this work, he played, from his position, a
remarkable part in the great drama on which it is founded--for this
feeder of chickens was no less a person than Honorius, Emperor of Rome.
It is the very imbecility of this man, at such a time as that we now
write on, which invests his character with a fearful interest in the eye
of posterity. In himself the impersonation of the meanest vices
inherent in the vicious civilisation of his period, to his feebleness
was accorded the terrible responsibility of liberating the long-prisoned
storm whose elements we have attempted to describe in the preceding
chapter. With just intellect enough to be capricious, and just
determination enough to be mischievous, he was an instrument fitted for
the uses of every ambitious villain who could succeed in gaining his
ear. To flatter his puerile tyranny, the infatuated intriguers of the
Court rewarded the heroic Stilicho for the rescue of his country with
the penalty of death, and defrauded Alaric of the moderate concessions
that they had solemnly pledged themselves to perform. To gratify his
vanity, he was paraded in triumph through the streets of Rome for a
victory that others had gained. To pander to his arrogance, by an
exhibition of the vilest privilege of that power which had been
intrusted to him for good, the massacre of the helpless hostages,
confided by Gothic honour to Roman treachery, was unhesitatingly
ordained; and, finally, to soothe the turbulence of his unmanly fears,
the last act of his unscrupulous councillors, ere the Empire fell, was
to authorise his abandoning his people in the hour of peril, careless
who suffered in defenceless Rome, while he was secure in fortified
Ravenna. Such was the man under whom the mightiest of the world's
structures was doomed to totter to its fall! Such was the figure
destined to close a scene which Time and Glory had united to hallow and
adorn! Raised and supported by a superhuman daring, that invested the
nauseous horrors of incessant bloodshed with a rude and appalling
magnificence, the mistress of nations was now fated to sink by the most
ignoble of defeats, under the most abject of tremblers. For this had
the rough old kingdom shaken off its enemies by swarms from its vigorous
arms! For this had the doubtful virtues of the Republic, and the
perilous magnificence of the Empire, perplexed and astonished the world!
In such a conclusion as Honorius ended the dignified barbarities of a
Brutus, the polished splendours of an Augustus, the unearthly atrocities
of a Nero, and the immortal virtues of a Trajan! Vainly, through the
toiling ages, over the ruin of her noblest hearts, and the prostitution
of her grandest intellects, had Rome striven pitilessly onward, grasping
at the shadow--Glory; the fiat had now gone forth that doomed her to
possess herself finally of the substance--Shame!
When the imperial trifler had exhausted his store of grain, and
satisfied the cravings of his voracious favourites, he was relieved of
his silver vase by two attendants. The flock of poultry was then
ushered out at one door, while the flock of geniuses was ushered in at
the other.
Leaving the emperor to cast his languid eyes over objects of art for
which he had no admiration, and to open his unwilling ears to
panegyrical orations for which he had no comprehension, we proceed to
introduce the reader to an apartment on the opposite side of the palace,
in which are congregated all the beauty and elegance of his Court.
Imagine a room two hundred feet long and proportionably broad. Its
floor is mosaic, wrought into the loveliest patterns. Its sides are
decorated with immense pillars of variegated marble, the recesses formed
by which are occupied by statues, all arranged in exquisite variety of
attitude, so as to appear to be offering to whoever approaches them the
rare flowers which it is the duty of the attendants to place in their
hands. The ceiling is painted in fresco, in patterns and colours
harmonising with those on the mosaic floor. The cornices are of silver,
and decorated with mottoes from the amatory poets of the day, the
letters of which are formed by precious stones. In the middle of the
room is a fountain throwing up streams of perfumed water, and surrounded
by golden aviaries containing birds of all sizes and nations. Three
large windows, placed at the eastern extremity of the apartment, look
out upon the Adriatic, but are covered at this hour, from the outside,
with silk curtains of a delicate green shade, which cast a soft,
luxurious light over every object, but are so thinly woven and so
skilfully arranged that the slightest breath of air which moves without
finds its way immediately to the languid occupants of the Court waiting-
room. The number of these individuals amounts to about fifty or sixty
persons. By far the larger half of the assemblage are women. Their
black hair tastefully braided into various forms, and adorned with
flowers or precious stones, contrasts elegantly with the brilliant
whiteness of the robes in which they are for the most part clothed. Some
of them are occupied in listlessly watching the movements of the birds
in the aviaries; others hold a languid and whispered conversation with
such of the courtiers as happen to be placed near them. The men exhibit
in their dresses a greater variety of colour, and in their occupations a
greater fertility of resource, than the women. Their garments, of the
lightest rose, violet, or yellow tints, diversify fantastically the
monotonous white robes of their gentle companions. Of their
employments, the most conspicuous are playing on the lute, gaming with
dice, teasing their lapdogs, and insulting their parasites. Whatever
their occupation, it is performed with little attention, and less
enthusiasm. Some recline on their couches with closed eyes, as if the
heat made the labour of using their organs of vision too much for them;
others, in the midst of a conversation, suddenly leave a sentence
unfinished, apparently incapacitated by lassitude from giving expression
to the simplest ideas. Every sight in the apartment that attracts the
eye, every sound that gains the ear, expresses a luxurious repose. No
brilliant light mars the pervading softness of the atmosphere; no
violent colour materialises the light, ethereal hues of the dresses; no
sudden noises interrupt the fitful and plaintive notes of the lute, jar
with the soft twittering of the birds in the aviaries, or drown the
still, regular melody of the ladies' voices. All objects, animate and
inanimate, are in harmony with each other. It is a scene of
spiritualised indolence--a picture of dreamy beatitude in the inmost
sanctuary of unruffled repose.
Amid this assemblage of beauty and nobility, the members of which were
rather to be generally noticed than particularly observed, there was,
however, one individual who, both by the solitary occupation he had
chosen and his accidental position in the room, was personally
remarkable among the listless patricians around him.
His couch was placed nearer the window than that of any other occupant
of the chamber. Some of his indolent neighbours--especially those of the
gentler sex--occasionally regarded him with mingled looks of admiration
and curiosity; but no one approached him, or attempted to engage him in
conversation. A piece of vellum lay by his side, on which, from time to
time, he traced a few words, and then resumed his reclining position,
apparently absorbed in reflection, and utterly regardless of all the
occupants, male and female, of the imperial apartment. Judging from his
general appearance, he could scarcely be twenty-five years of age. The
conformation of the upper part of his face was thoroughly intellectual--
the forehead high, broad, and upright; the eyes clear, penetrating, and
thoughtful;--but the lower part was, on the other hand, undeniably
sensual. The lips, full and thick, formed a disagreeable contrast to
the delicate chiselling of the straight Grecian nose; while the
fleshiness of the chin, and the jovial redundancy of the cheeks, were,
in their turn, utterly at variance with the character of the pale, noble
forehead, and the expression of the quick, intelligent eyes. In stature
he was barely of the middle size; but every part of his body was so
perfectly proportioned that he appeared, in any position, taller than he
really was. The upper part of his dress, thrown open from the heat,
partly disclosed the fine statuesque formation of his neck and chest.
His ears, hands, and feet were of that smallness and delicacy which is
held to denote the aristocracy of birth; and there was in his manner
that indescribable combination of unobtrusive dignity and unaffected
elegance, which in all ages and countries, and through all changes of
manners and customs, has rendered the demeanour of its few favoured
possessors the instantaneous interpreter of their social rank.
While the patrician was still occupied over his vellum, the following
conversation took place in whispers between two ladies placed near the
situation he occupied.
'Tell me, Camilla,' said the eldest and stateliest of the two, 'who is
the courtier so occupied in composition? I have endeavoured, I know not
how often, to catch his eye; but the man will look at nothing but his
roll of vellum or the corners of the room.'
'What, are you so great a stranger in Italy as not to know him!' replied
the other, a lively girl of small delicate form, who fidgeted with
persevering restlessness on her couch, and seemed incapable of giving an
instant's steady attention to any of the objects around her. 'By all
the saints, martyrs, and relics of my uncle the bishop!'
'Hush! You should not swear!'
'Not swear! Why, I am making a new collection of oaths, intended solely
for ladies' use! I intend to set the fashion of swearing by them
myself!'
'But answer my question, I beseech you! Will you never learn to talk on
one subject at a time?'
'Your question--ah, your question! It was about the Goths?'
'No, no! It was about that man who is incessantly writing, and will
look at nobody. He is almost as provoking as Camilla herself!'
'Don't frown so! That man, as you call him, is the senator Vetranio.'
The lady started. It was evident that Vetranio had a reputation.
'Yes!' continued the lively Camilla, 'that is the accomplished Vetranio;
but he will be no favourite of yours, for he sometimes swears--swears by
the ancient gods, too, which is forbidden!'
'He is handsome.'
'Handsome! he is beautiful! Not a woman in Italy but is languishing for
him!'
'I have heard that he is clever.'
'Who has not? He is the author of some of the most celebrated sauces of
the age. Cooks of all nations worship him as an oracle. Then he writes
poetry, and composes music, and paints pictures! And as for
philosophy--he talks it better than my uncle the bishop!'
'Is he rich?'
'Ah! my uncle the bishop!--I must tell you how I helped Vetranio to make
a satire on him! When I was staying with him at Rome, I used often to
see a woman in a veil taken across the garden to his study; so, to
perplex him, I asked him who she was. And he frowned and stammered, and
said at first that I was disrespectful; but he told me afterwards that
she was an Arian whom he was labouring to convert. So I thought I
should like to see how this conversion went on, and I hid myself behind
a bookcase. But it is a profound secret; I tell it you in confidence.'
'I don't care to know it. Tell me about Vetranio.'
'How ill-natured you are! Oh! I shall never forget how we laughed when
I told Vetranio what I had seen. He took up his writing materials, and
made the satire immediately. The next day all Rome heard of it. My
uncle was speechless with rage! I believe he suspected me; but he gave
up converting the Arian lady, and--'
'I ask you again--Is Vetranio rich?'
'Half Sicily is his. He has immense estates in Africa, olive-grounds in
Syria, and corn-fields in Gaul. I was present at an entertainment he
gave at his villa in Sicily. He fitted up one of his vessels from the
descriptions of the furnishing of Cleopatra's galley, and made his
slaves swim after us as attendant Tritons. Oh! it was magnificent!'
'I should like to know him.'
'You should see his cats! He has a perfect legion of them at his villa.
Twelve slaves are employed to attend on them. He is mad about cats, and
declares that the old Egyptians were right to worship them. He told me
yesterday, that when his largest cat is dead he will canonise her, in
spite of the Christians! And then he is so kind to his slaves! They
are never whipped or punished, except when they neglect or disfigure
themselves; for Vetranio will allow nothing that is ugly or dirty to
come near him. You must visit his banqueting-hall in Rome. It is
perfection!'
'But why is he here?'
'He has come to Ravenna, charged with some secret message from the
Senate, and has presented a rare breed of chickens to that foolish--'
'Hush! you may be overheard!'
'Well!--to that wise emperor of ours! Ah! the palace has been so
pleasant since he has been here!'
At this instant the above dialogue--from the frivolity of which the
universally-learned readers of modern times will, we fear, recoil with
contempt--was interrupted by a movement on the part of its hero which
showed that his occupation was at an end. With the elaborate
deliberation of a man who disdains to exhibit himself as liable to be
hurried by any mortal affair, Vetranio slowly folded up the vellum he
had now filled with writing, and depositing it in his bosom, made a sign
to a slave who happened to be then passing near him with a dish of
fruit.
Having received his message, the slave retired to the entrance of the
apartment, and beckoning to a man who stood outside the door, motioned
him to approach Vetranio's couch.
This individual immediately hurried across the room to the window where
the elegant Roman awaited him. Not the slightest description of him is
needed; for he belonged to a class with which moderns are as well
acquainted as ancients--a class which has survived all changes of
nations and manners--a class which came in with the first rich man in
the world, and will only go out with the last. In a word, he was a
parasite.
He enjoyed, however, one great superiority over his modern successors:
in his day flattery was a profession--in ours it has sunk to a pursuit.
'I shall leave Ravenna this evening,' said Vetranio.
The parasite made three low bows and smiled ecstatically.
'You will order my travelling equipage to be at the palace gates an hour
before sunset.'
The parasite declared he should never forget the honour of the
commission, and left the room.
The sprightly Camilla, who had overheard Vetranio's command, jumped off
her couch, as soon as the parasite's back was turned, and running up to
the senator, began to reproach him for the determination he had just
formed.
'Have you no compunction at leaving me to the dulness of this horrible
palace, to satisfy your idle fancy for going to Rome,' said she, pouting
her pretty lip, and playing with a lock of the dark brown hair that
clustered over Vetranio's brow.
'Has the senator Vetranio so little regard for his friends as to leave
them to the mercy of the Goths?' said another lady, advancing with a
winning smile to Camilla's side.
'Ah, those Goths!' exclaimed Vetranio, turning to the last speaker.
'Tell me, Julia, is it not reported that the barbarians are really
marching into Italy?'
'Everybody has heard of it. The emperor is so discomposed by the
rumour, that he has forbidden the very name of the Goths to be mentioned
in his presence again.'
'For my part,' continued Vetranio, drawing Camilla towards him, and
playfully tapping her little dimpled hand, 'I am in anxious expectation
of the Goths, for I have designed a statue of Minerva, for which I can
find no model so fit as a woman of that troublesome nation. I am
informed upon good authority, that their limbs are colossal, and their
sense of propriety most obediently pliable under the discipline of the
purse.'
'If the Goths supply you with a model for anything,' said a courtier who
had joined the group while Vetranio was speaking, 'it will be with a
representation of the burning of your palace at Rome, which they will
enable you to paint from the inexhaustible reservoir of your own
wounds.'
The individual who uttered this last observation was remarkable among
the brilliant circle around him by his excessive ugliness. Urged by his
personal disadvantages, and the loss of all his property at the gaming-
table, he had latterly personated a character, the accomplishments
attached to which rescued him, by their disagreeable originality in that
frivolous age, from oblivion or contempt. He was a Cynic philosopher.
His remark, however, produced no other effect on his hearers' serenity
than to excite their merriment. Vetranio laughed, Camilla laughed,
Julia laughed. The idea of a troop of barbarians ever being able to
burn a palace at Rome was too wildly ridiculous for any one's gravity;
and as the speech was repeated in other parts of the room, in spite of
their dulness and lassitude the whole Court laughed.
'I know not why I should be amused by that man's nonsense,' said
Camilla, suddenly becoming grave at the very crisis of a most attractive
smile, 'when I am so melancholy at the thought of Vetranio's departure.
What will become of me when he is gone? Alas! who will be left in the
palace to compose songs to my beauty and music for my lute? Who will
paint me as Venus, and tell me stories about the ancient Egyptians and
their cats? Who at the banquet will direct what dishes I am to choose,
and what I am to reject? Who?'--and poor little Camilla stopped
suddenly in her enumeration of the pleasures she was about to lose, and
seemed on the point of weeping as piteously as she had been laughing
rapturously but the instant before.
Vetranio was touched--not by the compliment to his more intellectual
powers, but by the admission of his convivial supremacy as a guide to
the banquet, contained in the latter part of Camilla's remonstrance.
The sex were then, as now, culpably deficient in gastronomic enthusiasm.
It was, therefore, a perfect triumph to have made a convert to the
science of the youngest and loveliest of the ladies of the Court.
'If she can gain leave of absence,' said the gratified senator, 'Camilla
shall accompany me to Rome, and shall be present at the first
celebration of my recent discovery of a Nightingale Sauce.'
Camilla was in ecstasies. She seized Vetranio's cheeks between her rosy
little fingers, kissed him as enthusiastically as a child kisses a new
toy, and darted gaily off to prepare for her departure.
'Vetranio would be better employed,' sneered the Cynic, 'in inventing
new salves for future wounds than new sauces for future nightingales!
His carcase will be carved by Gothic swords as a feast for the worms
before his birds are spitted with Roman skewers as a feast for his
guests! Is this a time for cutting statues and concocting sauces? Fie
on the senators who abandon themselves to such pursuits as Vetranio's!'
'I have other designs,' replied the object of all this moral
indignation, looking with insulting indifference on the Cynic's
repulsive countenance, 'which, from their immense importance to the
world, must meet with universal approval. The labour that I have just
achieved forms one of a series of three projects which I have for some
time held in contemplation. The first is an analysis of the new
priesthood; the second, a true personification, both by painting and
sculpture, of Venus; the third, a discovery of what has been hitherto
uninvented--a nightingale sauce. By the inscrutable wisdom of Fate, it
has been so willed that the last of the objects I proposed to myself has
been the first attained. The sauce is composed, and I have just
concluded on this vellum the ode that is to introduce it at my table.
The analysation will be my next labour. It will take the form of a
treatise, in which, making the experience of past years the groundwork
of prophecy for the future, I shall show the precise number of
additional dissensions, controversies, and quarrels that will be require
to enable the new priesthood to be themselves the destroyers of their
own worship. I shall ascertain by an exact computation the year in
which this destruction will be consummated; and I have by me as the
materials for my work an historical summary of Christian schisms and
disputes in Rome for the last hundred years. As for my second design,
the personification of Venus, it is of appalling difficulty. It demands
an investigation of the women of every nation under the sun; a
comparison of the relative excellences and peculiarities of their
several charms; and a combination of all that is loveliest in the
infinite variety of their most prominent attractions, under one form.
To forward the execution of this arduous project, my tenants at home and
my slave-merchants abroad have orders to send to my villa in Sicily all
women who are born most beautiful in the Empire, or can be brought most
beautiful from the nations around. I will have them displayed before
me, of every shade in complexion and of every peculiarity in form! At
the fitting period I shall commence my investigations, undismayed by
difficulty, and determined on success. Never yet has the true Venus
been personified! Should I accomplish the task, how exquisite will be
my triumph! My work will be the altar at which thousands will offer up
the softest emotions of the heart. It will free the prisoned
imagination of youth, and freshen the fading recollections on the memory
of age!'
Vetranio paused. The Cynic was struck dumb with indignation. A
solitary zealot for the Church, who happened to be by, frowned at the
analysation. The ladies tittered at the personification. The
gastronomists chuckled at the nightingale sauce; but for the first few
minutes no one spoke. During this temporary embarrassment, Vetranio
whispered a few words in Julia's ear; and--just as the Cynic was
sufficiently recovered to retort--accompanied by the lady, he quitted
the room.
Never was popularity more unalloyed than Vetranio's. Gifted with a
disposition the pliability of which adapted itself to all emergencies,
his generosity disarmed enemies, while his affability made friends.
Munificent without assumption, successful without pride, he obliged with
grace and shone with safety. People enjoyed his hospitality, for they
knew that it was disinterested; and admired his acquirements, for they
felt that they were unobtrusive. Sometimes (as in his dialogue with the
Cynic) the whim of the moment, or the sting of a sarcasm, drew from him
a hint at his station, or a display of his eccentricities; but, as he
was always the first soon afterwards to lead the laugh at his own
outbreak, his credit as a noble suffered nothing by his infirmity as a
man. Gaily and attractively he moved in all grades of the society of
his age, winning his social laurels in every rank, without making a
rival to dispute their possession, or an enemy to detract from their
value.
On quitting the Court waiting-room, Vetranio and Julia descended the
palace stairs and passed into the emperor's garden. Used generally as
an evening lounge, this place was now untenanted, save by the few
attendants engaged in cultivating the flower-beds and watering the
smooth, shady lawns. Entering one of the most retired of the numerous
summer-houses among the trees, Vetranio motioned his companion to take a
seat, and then abruptly addressed her in the following words:--
'I have heard that you are about to depart for Rome--is it true?'
He asked this question in a low voice, and with a manner in its
earnestness strangely at variance with the volatile gaiety which had
characterised him, but a few moments before, among the nobles of the
Court. As Julia answered him in the affirmative, his countenance
expressed a lively satisfaction; and seating himself by her side, he
continued the conversation thus:--
'If I thought that you intended to stay for any length of time in the
city, I should venture upon a fresh extortion from your friendship by
asking you to lend me your little villa at Aricia!'
'You shall take with you to Rome an order on my steward to place
everything there at your entire disposal.'
'My generous Julia! You are of the gifted few who really know how to
confer a favour! Another woman would have asked me why I wanted the
villa--you give it unreservedly. So delicate an unwillingness to
intrude on a secret reminds me that the secret should now be yours!'
To explain the easy confidence that existed between Vetranio and Julia,
it is necessary to inform the reader that the lady--although still
attractive in appearance--was of an age to muse on her past, rather than
to meditate on her future conquests. She had known her eccentric
companion from his boyhood, had been once flattered in his verses, and
was sensible enough--now that her charms were on the wane--to be as
content with the friendship of the senator as she had formerly been
enraptured with the adoration of the youth.
'You are too penetrating,' resumed Vetranio, after a short pause, 'not
to have already suspected that I only require your villa to assist me in
the concealment of an intrigue. So peculiar is my adventure in its
different circumstances, that to make use of my palace as the scene of
its development would be to risk a discovery which might produce the
immediate subversion of all my designs. But I fear the length of my
confession will exceed the duration of your patience!'
'You have aroused my curiosity. I could listen to you for ever!'
'A short time before I took my departure from Rome for this place,'
continued Vetranio, 'I encountered an adventure of the most
extraordinary nature, which has haunted me with the most extraordinary
perseverance, and which will have, I feel assured, the most
extraordinary results. I was sitting one evening in the garden of my
palace on the Pincian Mount, occupied in trying a new composition on my
lute. In one of the pauses of the melody, which was tender and
plaintive, I heard sounds that resembled the sobbing of some one in
distress among the trees behind me. I looked cautiously round, and
discerned, half-hidden by the verdure, the figure of a young girl, who
appeared to be listening to the music with the most entranced attention.
Flattered by such a testimony to my skill, and anxious to gain a nearer
view of my mysterious visitant, I advanced towards her hiding-place,
forgetting in my haste to continue playing on the lute. The instant the
music ceased, she discerned me and disappeared. Determined to behold
her, I again struck the chords, and in a few minutes I saw her white
robe once more among the trees. I redoubled my efforts. I played with
the utmost expression the most pathetic parts of the melody. As if
under the influence of a charm, she began to advance towards me, now
hesitating, now moving back a few steps, now approaching, half-
reluctantly, half willingly, until, utterly vanquished by the long
trembling close of the last cadence of the air, she ran suddenly up to
me, and falling at my feet, raised her hands as if to implore my
pardon.'
'Truly this was no common tribute to your skill! Did she speak to you?'
'She uttered not a word,' continued Vetranio. 'Her large soft eyes,
bright with tears, looked piteously up in my face; her delicate lips
trembled, as if she wished to speak, but dared not; her smooth round
arms were the very perfection of beauty. Child as she seemed in years
and emotions, she looked a woman in loveliness and form. For the moment
I was too much astonished by the suddenness of her supplicating action
to move or speak. As soon as I recovered myself I attempted to fondle
and console her, but she shrunk from my embrace, and seemed inclined to
escape from me again; until I touched once more the strings of the lute,
and then she uttered a subdued exclamation of delight, nestled close up
to me, and looked into my face with such a strange expression of mingled
adoration and rapture, that I declare to you, Julia, I felt as bashful
before her as a boy.'
'You bashful! The Senator Vetranio bashful!' exclaimed Julia, looking
up with an expression of the most unfeigned incredulity and
astonishment.
'The lute,' pursued Vetranio gravely, without heeding the interruption,
'was my sole means of procuring any communication with her. If I ceased
playing, we were as strangers; if I resumed, we were as friends. So,
subduing the notes of the instrument while she spoke to me in a soft
tremulous musical voice, I still continued to play. By this plan I
discovered at our first interview that she was the daughter of one
Numerian, that she was on the point of completing her fourteenth year,
and that she was called Antonina. I had only succeeded in gaining this
mere outline of her story, when, as if struck by some sudden
apprehension, she tore herself from me with a look of the utmost terror,
and entreating me not to follow her if I ever desired to see her again,
she disappeared rapidly among the trees.'
'More and more wonderful! And, in your new character of a bashful man,
you doubtless obeyed her injunctions?'
'I did,' replied the senator; 'but the next evening I revisited the
garden grove, and, as soon as I struck the chords, as if by magic, she
again approached. At this second interview I learned the reason of her
mysterious appearances and departures. Her father, she told me, was one
of a new sect, who imagine--with what reason it is impossible to
comprehend--that they recommend themselves to their Deity by making
their lives one perpetual round of bodily suffering and mental anguish.
Not content with distorting all his own feelings and faculties, this
tyrant perpetrated his insane austerities upon the poor child as well.
He forbade her to enter a theatre, to look on sculpture, to read poetry,
to listen to music. He made her learn long prayers, and attend to
interminable sermons. He allowed her no companions of her own age--not
even girls like herself. The only recreation that she could obtain was
the permission--granted with much reluctance and many rebukes--to
cultivate a little garden which belonged to the house they lived in, and
joined at one point the groves round my palace. There, while she was
engaged over her flowers, she first heard the sound of my lute. for many
months before I had discovered her, she had been in the habit of
climbing the enclosure that bounded her garden, and hiding herself among
the trees to listen to the music, whenever her father's concerns took
him abroad. She had been discovered in this occupation by an old man
appointed to watch her in his master's absence. The attendant, however,
on hearing her confession, not only promised to keep her secret, but
permitted her to continue her visits to my grove whenever I chanced to
be playing there on the lute. Now the most mysterious part of this
matter is, that the girl seemed--in spite of his severity towards her--
to have a great affection for her surly; for, when I offered to deliver
her from his custody, she declared that nothing could induce her to
desert him--not even the attraction of living among fine pictures and
hearing beautiful music every hour in the day. But I see I weary you;
and, indeed, it is evident from the length of the shadows that the hour
of my departure is at hand. Let me then pass from my introductory
interviews with Antonina, to the consequences that had resulted from
them when I set forth on my journey to Ravenna.'
'I think I can imagine the consequences already!' said Julia, smiling
maliciously.
'Begin then,' retorted Vetranio, 'by imagining that the strangeness of
this girl's situation, and the originality of her ideas, invested her
with an attraction for me, which the charms of her person and age
contributed immensely to heighten. She delighted my faculties as a
poet, as much as she fired my feelings as a man; and I determined to
lure her from the tyrannical protection of her father by the employment
of every artifice that my ingenuity could suggest. I began by teaching
her to exercise for herself the talent which had so attracted her in
another. By the familiarity engendered on both sides by such an
occupation, I hoped to gain as much in affection from her as she
acquired in skill from me; but to my astonishment, I still found her as
indifferent towards the master, and as tender towards the music, as she
had appeared at our first interview. If she had repelled my advances,
if they had overwhelmed her with confusion, I could have adapted myself
to her humour, I should have felt the encouragement of hope; but the
coldness, the carelessness, the unnatural, incomprehensible ease with
which she received even my caresses, utterly disconcerted me. It seemed
as if she could only regard me as a moving statue, as a mere
impersonation, immaterial as the science I was teaching her. If I spoke,
she hardly looked on me; if I moved, she scarcely noticed the action. I
could not consider it dislike; she seemed to gentle to nourish such a
feeling for any creature on earth. I could not believe it coldness; she
was all life, all agitation, if she heard only a few notes of music.
When she touched the chords of the instrument, her whole frame trembled.
Her eyes, mild, serious, and thoughtful when she looked on me, now
brightened with delight, now softened with tears, when she listened to
the lute. As day by day her skill in music increased, so her manner
towards me grew more inexplicably indifferent. At length, weary of the
constant disappointments that I experienced, and determined to make a
last effort to touch her heart by awakening her gratitude, I presented
her with the very lute which she had at first heard, and on which she
had now learned to play. Never have I seen any human being so
rapturously delighted as this incomprehensible girl when she received
the instrument from my hands. She alternately wept and laughed over it,
she kissed it, fondled it, spoke to it, as if it had been a living
thing. But when I approached to suppress the expressions of
thankfulness that she poured on me for the gift, she suddenly hid the
lute in her robe, as if afraid that I should deprive her of it, and
hurried rapidly from my sight. The next day I waited for her at our
accustomed meeting-place, but she never appeared. I sent a slave to her
father's house, but she would hold no communication with him. It was
evident that, now she had gained her end, she cared no more to behold
me. In my first moments of irritation, I determined to make her feel my
power, if she despised my kindness; but reflection convinced me, from my
acquaintance with her character, that in such a matter force was
impolitic, that I should risk my popularity in Rome, and engage myself
in an unworthy quarrel to no purpose. Dissatisfied with myself, and
disappointed in the girl, I obeyed the first dictates of my impatience,
and seizing the opportunity afforded by my duties in the senate of
escaping from the scene of defeated hopes, I departed angrily for
Ravenna.'
'Departed for Ravenna!' cried Julia, laughing outright. 'Oh, what a
conclusion to the adventure! I confess it, Vetranio, such consequences
as these are beyond all imagination!'
'You laugh, Julia,' returned the senator, a little piqued; 'but hear me
to the end, and you will find that I have not yet resigned myself to
defeat. For the few days that I have remained here, Antonina's image
has incessantly troubled my thoughts. I perceive that my inclination,
as well as my reputation, is concerned in subduing her ungrateful
aversion. I suspect that my anxiety to gain her will, if unremoved, so
far influence my character, that from Vetranio the Serene, I shall be
changed into Vetranio the Sardonic. Pride, honour, curiosity, and love
all urge me to her conquest. To prepare for my banquet is an excuse to
the Court for my sudden departure from this place; the real object of my
journey is Antonina alone.'
'Ah, now I recognise my friend again in his own character,' remarked the
lady approvingly.
'You will ask me how I purpose to obtain another interview with her?'
continued Vetranio. 'I answer, that the girl's attendant has voluntarily
offered himself as an instrument for the prosecution of my plans. The
very day before I departed from Rome, he suddenly presented himself to
my in my garden, and proposed to introduce me into Numerian's house--
having first demanded, with the air more of an equal than an inferior,
whether the report that I was still a secret adherent of the old
religion, of the worship of the gods, was true. Suspicious of the
fellow's motives (for he abjured all recompense as the reward of his
treachery), and irritated by the girl's recent ingratitude, I treated
his offer with contempt. Now, however, that my dissatisfaction is
calmed and my anxiety aroused, I am determined, at all hazards, to trust
myself to this man, be his motives for aiding me what they may. If my
efforts at my expected interview--and I will not spare them--are
rewarded with success, it will be necessary to obtain some refuge for
Antonina that will neither be suspected nor searched. For such a
hiding-place, nothing can be more admirably adapted than your Arician
villa. Do you--now that you know for what use it is intended--repent of
your generous disposal of it in aid of my design?'
'I am delighted to have had it to bestow on you,' replied the liberal
Julia, pressing Vetranio's hand. 'Your adventure is indeed uncommon--I
burn with impatience to hear how it will end. Whatever happens, you may
depend on my secrecy and count on my assistance. But see, the sun is
already verging towards the west; and yonder comes one of your slaves to
inform you, I doubt not, that your equipage is prepared. Return with me
to the palace, and I will supply you with the letter necessary to
introduce you as master to my country abode.'
*****
The worthy citizens of Ravenna assembled in the square before the palace
to behold the senator's departure, had entirely exhausted such innocent
materials for amusement as consisted in staring at the guards, catching
the clouds of gnats that hovered about their ears, and quarrelling with
each other; and were now reduced to a state of very noisy and unanimous
impatience, when their discontent was suddenly and most effectually
appeased by the appearance of the travelling equipage with Vetranio and
Camilla outside the palace gates.
Uproarious shouts greeted the appearance of the senator and his
magnificent retinue; but they were increased a hundred-fold when the
chief slaves, by their master's command, each scattered a handful of
small coin among the poorer classes of the spectators. Every man among
that heterogeneous assemblage of rogues, fools, and idlers roared his
loudest and capered his highest, in honour of the generous patrician.
Gradually and carefully the illustrious travellers moved through the
crowd around them to the city gate; and thence, amid incessant shouts of
applause, raised with imposing unanimity of lung, and wrought up to the
most distracting discordancy of noise, Vetranio and his lively companion
departed in triumph for Rome.
*****
A few days after this event the citizens were again assembled at the
same place and hour--probably to witness another patrician departure--
when their ears were assailed by the unexpected sound produced by the
call to arms, which was followed immediately by the closing of the city
gates. They had scarcely asked each other the meaning of these unusual
occurrences, when a peasant, half frantic with terror, rushed into the
square, shouting out the terrible intelligence that the Goths were in
sight!
The courtiers heard the news, and starting from a luxurious repast,
hurried to the palace windows to behold the portentous spectacle. For
the remainder of the evening the banqueting tables were unapproached by
the guests.
The wretched emperor was surprised among his poultry by that dreaded
intelligence. He, too, hastened to the windows, and looking forth, saw
the army of avengers passing in contempt his solitary fortress, and
moving swiftly onward towards defenceless Rome. Long after the darkness
had hidden the masses of that mighty multitude from his eyes, did he
remain staring helplessly upon the fading landscape, in a stupor of
astonishment and dread; and, for the first time since he had possessed
them, his flocks of fowls were left for that night unattended by their
master's hand.
CHAPTER 3. ROME.
The perusal of the title to this chapter will, we fear, excite emotions
of apprehension, rather than of curiosity, in the breasts of experienced
readers. They will doubtless imagine that it is portentous of long
rhapsodies on those wonders of antiquity, the description of which has
long become absolutely nauseous to them by incessant iteration. They
will foresee wailings over the Palace of the Caesars, and meditations
among the arches of the Colosseum, loading a long series of weary
paragraphs to the very chapter's end; and, considerately anxious to
spare their attention a task from which it recoils, they will
unanimously hurry past the dreaded desert of conventional reflection, to
alight on the first oasis that may present itself, whether it be formed
by a new division of the story, or suddenly indicated by the appearance
of a dialogue. Animated, therefore, by apprehensions such as these, we
hasten to assure them that in no instance will the localities of our
story trench upon the limits of the well-worn Forum, or mount the arches
of the exhausted Colosseum. It is with the beings, and not the
buildings of old Rome, that their attention is to be occupied. We
desire to present them with a picture of the inmost emotions of the
times--of the living, breathing actions and passions of the people of
the doomed Empire. Antiquarian topography and classical architecture we
leave to abler pens, and resign to other readers.
It is, however, necessary that the sphere in which the personages of our
story are about to act should be in some measure indicated, in order to
facilitate the comprehension of their respective movements. That
portion of the extinct city which we design to revive has left few
traces of its existence in the modern town. Its sites are
traditionary--its buildings are dust. The church rises where the temple
once stood, and the wine-shop now lures the passing idler where the bath
invited his ancestor of old.
The walls of Rome are in extent, at the present day, the same as they
were at the period of which we now write. But here all analogy between
the ancient and modern city ends. The houses that those walls were once
scarcely wide enough to enclose have long since vanished, and their
modern successors occupy but a third of the space once allotted to the
capital of the Empire.
Beyond the walls immense suburbs stretched forth in the days of old.
Gorgeous villas, luxurious groves, temples, theatres, baths--
interspersed by colonies of dwellings belonging to the lower orders of
the people--surrounded the mighty city. Of these innumerable abodes
hardly a trace remains. The modern traveller, as he looks forth over
the site of the famous suburbs, beholds, here and there, a ruined
aqueduct, or a crumbling tomb, tottering on the surface of a
pestilential marsh.
The present entrance to Rome by the Porta del Popolo occupies the same
site as the ancient Flaminian Gate. Three great streets now lead from
it towards the southern extremity of the city, and form with their
tributaries the principal portion of modern Rome. On one side they are
bounded by the Pincian Hill, on the other by the Tiber. Of these
streets, those nearest the river occupy the position of the famous
Campus Martius; those on the other side, the ancient approaches to the
gardens of Sallust and Lucullus, on the Pincian Mount.
On the opposite bank of the Tiber (gained by the Ponte St. Angelo,
formerly the Pons Elius), two streets pierced through an irregular and
populous neighbourhood, conduct to the modern Church of St. Peter. At
the period of our story this part of the city was of much greater
consequence, both in size and appearance, than it is at present, and led
directly to the ancient Basilica of St. Peter, which stood on the same
site as that now occupied by the modern edifice.
The events about to be narrated occur entirely in the parts of the city
just described. From the Pincian Hill, across the Campus Martius, over
the Pons Elius, and on to the Basilica of St. Peter, the reader may be
often invited to accompany us, but he will be spared all necessity of
penetrating familiar ruins, or mourning over the sepulchres of departed
patriots.
Ere, however, we revert to former actors or proceed to new characters,
it will be requisite to people the streets that we here attempt to
rebuild. By this process it is hoped that the reader will gain that
familiarity with the manners and customs of the Romans of the fifth
century on which the influence of this story mainly depends, and which
we despair of being able to instil by a philosophical disquisition on
the features of the age. A few pages of illustration will serve our
purpose better, perhaps, than volumes of historical description. There
is no more unerring index to the character of a people than the streets
of their cities.
It is near evening. In the widest part of the Campus Martius crowds of
people are assembled before the gates of a palace. They are congregated
to receive several baskets of provisions, distributed with ostentatious
charity by the owner of the mansion. The incessant clamour and
agitation of the impatient multitude form a strange contrast to the
stately serenity of the natural and artificial objects by which they are
enclosed on all sides.
The space they occupy is oblong in shape and of great extent in size.
Part of it is formed by a turf walk shaded with trees, part by the paved
approaches to the palace and the public baths which stand in its
immediate neighbourhood. These two edifices are remarkable by their
magnificent outward adornments of statues, and the elegance and number
of the flights of steps by which they are respectively entered. With
the inferior buildings, the market-places and the gardens attached to
them, they are sufficiently extensive to form the boundary of one side
of the immediate view. The appearance of monotony which might at other
times be remarked in the vastness and regularity of their white fronts,
is at this moment agreeably broken by several gaily-coloured awnings
stretched over their doors and balconies. The sun is now shining on
them with overpowering brightness; the metallic ornaments on their
windows glitter like gems of fire; even the trees which form their
groves partake of the universal flow of light, and fail, like the
objects around them, to offer to the weary eye either refreshment or
repose.
Towards the north, the Mausoleum of Augustus, towering proudly up into
the brilliant sky, at once attracts the attention. From its position,
parts of this noble building are already in shade. Not a human being is
visible on any part of its mighty galleries--it stands solitary and
sublime, an impressive embodiment of the emotions which it was raised to
represent.
On the side opposite the palace and the baths is the turf walk already
mentioned. Trees, thickly planted and interlaced by vines, cast a
luxurious shade over this spot. In their interstices, viewed from a
distance, appear glimpses of gay dresses, groups of figures in repose,
stands loaded with fruit and flowers, and innumerable white marble
statues of fauns and wood-nymphs. From this delicious retreat the
rippling of fountains is to be heard, occasionally interrupted by the
rustling of leaves, or the plaintive cadences of the Roman flute.
Southward two pagan temples stand in lonely grandeur among a host of
monuments and trophies. The symmetry of their first construction still
remains unimpaired, their white marble pillars shine in the sunlight
brightly as of old, yet they now present to the eye an aspect of strange
desolation, of unnatural mysterious gloom. Although the laws forbid the
worship for which they were built, the hand of reform has as yet not
ventured to doom them to ruin or adapt them to Christian purposes. None
venture to tread their once-crowded colonnades. No priest appears to
give the oracles from their doors; no sacrifices reek upon their naked
altars. Under their roofs, visited only by the light that steals through
their narrow entrances, stand unnoticed, unworshipped, unmoved, the
mighty idols of old Rome. Human emotion, which made them Omnipotence
once, has left them but stone now. The 'Star in the East' has already
dimmed the fearful halo which the devotion of bloodshed once wreathed
round their forms. Forsaken and alone, they stand but as the gloomy
monuments of the greatest delusion ever organised by the ingenuity of
man.
We have now, so to express it, exhibited the frame surrounding the
moving picture, which we shall next attempt to present to the reader by
mixing with the multitude before the palace gates.
This assembly resolved itself into three divisions: that collected
before the palace steps, that loitering about the public baths, and that
reposing in the shade of the groves. The first was of the most
consequence in numbers, and of the greatest variety in appearance.
Composed of rogues of the worst order from every quarter of the world,
it might be said to present, in its general aspect of numerical
importance, the very sublime of degradation. Confident in their rude
union of common avidity, these worthy citizens vented their insolence on
all objects, and in every direction, with a careless impartiality which
would have shamed the most victorious efforts of modern mobs. The
hubbub of voices was perfectly fearful. The coarse execrations of
drunken Gauls, the licentious witticisms of effeminate Greeks, the noisy
satisfaction of native Romans, the clamorous indignation of irritable
Jews--all sounded together in one incessant chorus of discordant noises.
Nor were the senses of sight and smell more agreeably assailed than the
faculty of hearing, by this anomalous congregation. Immodest youth and
irreverent age; woman savage, man cowardly; the swarthy Ethiopian
beslabbered with stinking oil; the stolid Briton begrimed with dirt--
these, and a hundred other varying combinations, to be imagined rather
than expressed, met the attention in every direction. To describe the
odours exhaled by the heat from this seething mixture of many
pollutions, would be to force the reader to close the book; we prefer to
return to the distribution which was the cause of this degrading tumult,
and which consisted of small baskets of roasted meat packed with common
fruits and vegetables, and handed, or rather flung down, to the mob by
the servants of the nobleman who gave the feast. The people revelled in
the abundance thus presented to them. They threw themselves upon it like
wild beasts; they devoured it like hogs, or bore it off like plunderers;
while, secure in the eminence on which they were placed, the purveyors
of this public banquet expressed their contempt for its noisy
recipients, by holding their noses, stopping their ears, turning their
backs, and other pantomimic demonstrations of lofty and excessive
disgust. These actions did not escape the attention of those members of
the assembly who, having eaten their fill, were at leisure to make use
of their tongues, and who showered an incessant storm of abuse on the
heads of their benefactor's retainers.
'See those fellows!' cried one; 'they are the waiters at our feast, and
they mock us to our faces! Down with the filthy kitchen thieves!'
'Excellently well said, Davus!--but who is to approach them? They stink
at this distance!'
'The rotten-bodied knaves have the noses of dogs and the carcases of
goats.'
Then came a chorus of voices--'Down with them! Down with them!' In the
midst of which an indignant freedman advanced to rebuke the mob,
receiving, as the reward of his temerity, a shower of missiles and a
volley of curses; after which he was thus addressed by a huge, greasy
butcher, hoisted on his companions' shoulders:--
'By the soul of the emperor, could I get near you, you rogue, I would
quarter you with my fingers alone!--A grinning scoundrel that jeers at
others! A filthy flatterer that dirts the very ground he walks on! By
the blood of the martyrs, should I fling the sweepings of the slaughter-
house at him, he knows not where to get himself dried!'
'Thou rag of a man,' roared a neighbour of the indignant butcher's,
'dost thou frown upon the guests of thy master, the very scrapings of
whose skin are worth more than thy whole carcase! It is easier to make a
drinking-vessel of the skull of a flea than to make an honest man of
such a villainous night-walker as thou art!'
'Health and prosperity to our noble entertainer!' shouted one section of
the grateful crowd as the last speaker paused for breath.
'Death to all knaves of parasites!' chimed in another.
'Honour to the citizens of Rome!' roared a third party with modest
enthusiasm.
'Give that freedman our bones to pick!' screamed an urchin from the
outskirts of the crowd.
This ingenious piece of advice was immediately followed; and the
populace gave vent to a shout of triumph as the unfortunate freedman,
scared by a new volley of missiles, retreated with ignominious
expedition to the shelter of his patron's halls.
In the slight and purified specimen of the 'table talk' of a Roman mob
which we have here ventured to exhibit, the reader will perceive that
extraordinary mixture of servility and insolence which characterised not
only the conversation but the actions of the lower orders of society at
the period of which we write. Oppressed and degraded, on the one hand,
to a point of misery scarcely conceivable to the public of the present
day, the poorer classes in Rome were, on the other, invested with such a
degree of moral license, and permitted such an extent of political
privilege, as flattered their vanity into blinding their sense of
indignation. Slaves in their season of servitude, masters in their hours
of recreation, they presented, as a class, one of the most amazing
social anomalies ever existing in any nation; and formed, in their
dangerous and artificial position, one of the most important of the
internal causes of the downfall of Rome.
The steps of the public baths were almost as crowded as the space before
the neighbouring building. Incessant streams of people, either entering
or departing, poured over the broad flagstones of its marble colonnades.
This concourse, although composed in some parts of the same class of
people as that assembled before the palace, presented a certain
appearance of respectability. Here and there--chequering the dusky
monotony of masses of dirty tunics--might be discerned the refreshing
vision of a clean robe, or the grateful indication of a handsome person.
Little groups, removed as far as possible from the neighbourhood of the
noisy plebeians, were scattered about, either engaged in animated
conversation, or listlessly succumbing to the lassitude induced by a
recent bath. An instant's attention to the subject of discourse among
the more active of these individuals will aid us in pursuing our social
revelations.
The loudest voice among the speakers at this particular moment proceeded
from a tall, thin, sinister-looking man, who was haranguing a little
group of listeners with great vehemence and fluency.
'I tell you, Socius,' said he, turning suddenly upon one of his
companions, 'that, unless new slave-laws are made, my calling is at an
end. My patron's estate requires incessant supplies of these wretches.
I do my best to satisfy the demand, and the only result of my labour is,
that the miscreants either endanger my life, or fly with impunity to
join the gangs of robbers infesting our woods.'
'Truly I am sorry for you; but what alteration would you have made in
the slave-laws?'
'I would empower bailiffs to slay upon the spot all slaves whom they
thought disorderly, as an example to the rest!'
'What would such a permission avail you? These creatures are necessary,
and such a law would exterminate them in a few months. Can you not
break their spirit with labour, bind their strength with chains, and
vanquish their obstinacy with dungeons?'
'All this I have done, but they die under the discipline, or escape from
their prisons. I have now three hundred slaves on my patron's estates.
Against those born on our lands I have little to urge. Many of them, it
is true, begin the day with weeping and end it with death; but for the
most part, thanks to their diurnal allowance of stripes, they are
tolerably submissive. It is with the wretches that I have been obliged
to purchase from prisoners of war and the people of revolted towns that
I am so dissatisfied. Punishments have no effect on them, they are
incessantly indolent, sulky, desperate. It was but the other day that
ten of them poisoned themselves while at work in the fields, and fifty
more, after setting fire to a farm-house while my back was turned,
escaped to join a gang of their companions, who are now robbers in the
woods. These fellows, however, are the last of the troop who will
perpetrate such offences. With the concurrence of my patron, I have
adopted a plan that will henceforth tame them efficiently!'
'Are you at liberty to communicate it?'
'By the keys of St. Peter, I wish I could see it practised on every
estate in the land! It is this:--Near a sulphur lake at some distance
from my farm-house is a tract of marshy ground, overspread here and
there by the ruins of an ancient slaughter-house. I propose to dig in
this place several subterranean caverns, each of which shall be capable
of holding twenty men. Here my mutinous slaves shall sleep after their
day's labour. The entrances shall be closed until morning with a large
stone, on which I will have engraven this inscription: 'These are the
dormitories invented by Gordian, bailiff of Saturninus, a nobleman, for
the reception of refractory slaves.'
'Your plan is ingenious; but I suspect your slaves (so insensible to
hardships are the brutal herd) will sleep as unconcernedly in their new
dormitories as in their old.'
'Sleep! It will be a most original species of repose that they will
taste there! The stench of the sulphur lake will breathe Sabian odours
for them over a couch of mud! Their anointing oil will be the slime of
attendant reptiles! Their liquid perfumes will be the stagnant oozings
from their chamber roof! Their music will be the croaking of frogs and
the humming of gnats; and as for their adornments, why, they will be
decked forth with head-garlands of twining worms, and movable brooches
of cockchafers and toads! Tell me now, most sagacious Socius, do you
still think that amidst such luxuries as these my slaves will sleep?'
'No; they will die.'
'You are again wrong. They will curse and rave perhaps, but that is of
no consequence. They will work the longer above ground to shorten the
term of their repose beneath. They will wake at an instant's notice,
and come forth at a moment's signal. I have no fear of their dying!'
'Do you leave Rome soon?'
'I go this evening, taking with me such a supply of trustworthy
assistants as will enable me to execute my plan without delay.
Farewell, Socius!'
'Most ingenious of bailiffs, I bid you farewell!'
As the worthy Gordian stalked off, big with the dignity of his new
projects, the gestures and tones of a man who formed one of a little
group collected in a remote part of the portico he was about to quit
attracted his attention. Curiosity formed as conspicuous an ingredient
in this man's character as cruelty. He stole behind the base of a
neighbouring pillar; and, as the frequent repetition of the word 'Goths'
struck his ear (the report of that nation's impending invasion having by
this time reached Rome), he carefully disposed himself to listen with
the most implicit attention to the speaker's voice.
'Goths!' cried the man, in the stern, concentrated accents of despair.
'Is there one among us to whom this report of their advance upon Rome
does not speak of hope rather than of dread? Have we a chance of rising
from the degradation forced on us by our superiors until this den of
heartless triflers and shameless cowards is swept from the very earth
that it pollutes!'
'Your sentiments on the evils of our condition are undoubtedly most
just,' observed a fat, pompous man, to whom the preceding remarks had
been addressed, 'but I cannot desire the reform you so ardently hope
for. Think of the degradation of being conquered by barbarians!'
'I am the exile of my country's privileges. What interest have I in
upholding her honour--if honour she really has!' replied the first
speaker.
'Nay! Your expressions are too severe. You are too discontented to be
just.'
'Am I! Hear me for a moment, and you will change your opinion. You see
me now by my bearing and appearance superior to yonder plebeian herd.
You doubtless think that I live at my ease in the world, that I can feel
no anxiety for the future about my bodily necessities. What would you
say were I to tell you that if I want another meal, a lodging for to-
night, a fresh robe for tomorrow, I must rob or flatter some great man
to gain them? Yet so it is. I am hopeless, friendless, destitute. In
the whole of the Empire there is not an honest calling in which I can
take refuge. I must become a pander or a parasite--a hired tyrant over
slaves, or a chartered groveller beneath nobles--if I would not starve
miserably in the streets, or rob openly in the woods! This is what I
am. Now listen to what I was. I was born free. I inherited from my
father a farm which he had successfully defended from the encroachments
of the rich, at the expense of his comfort, his health, and his life.
When I succeeded to his lands, I determined to protect them in my time
as studiously as he had defended them in his. I worked
unintermittingly: I enlarged my house, I improved my fields, I
increased my flocks. One after another I despised the threats and
defeated the wiles of my noble neighbours, who desired possession of my
estate to swell their own territorial grandeur. In process of time I
married and had a child. I believed that I was picked out from my race
as a fortunate man--when one night I was attacked by robbers: slaves
made desperate by the cruelty of their wealthy masters. They ravaged my
cornfields, they deprived me of my flocks. When I demanded redress, I
was told to sell my lands to those who could defend them--to those rich
nobles whose tyranny had organised the band of wretches who had spoiled
me of my possessions, and to whose fraud-gotten treasures the government
were well pleased to grant that protection which they had denied to my
honest hoards. In my pride I determined that I would still be
independent. I planted new crops. With the little remnant of my money
I hired fresh servants and bought more flocks. I had just recovered
from my first disaster when I became the victim of a second. I was again
attacked. This time we had arms, and we attempted to defend ourselves.
My wife was slain before my eyes; my house was burnt to the ground; I
myself only escaped, mutilated with wounds; my child soon afterwards
pined and died. I had no wife, no offspring, no house, no money. My
fields still stretched round me, but I had none to cultivate them. My
walls still tottered at my feet, but I had none to rear them again, none
to inhabit them if they were reared. My father's lands were now become
a wilderness to me. I was too proud to sell them to my rich neighbour;
I preferred to leave them before I saw them the prey of a tyrant, whose
rank had triumphed over my industry, and who is now able to boast that
he can travel over ten leagues of senatorial property untainted by the
propinquity of a husbandman's farm. Houseless, homeless, friendless, I
have come to Rome alone in my affliction, helpless in my degradation!
Do you wonder now that I am careless about the honour of my country? I
would have served her with my life and my possessions when she was
worthy of my service; but she has cast me off, and I care not who
conquers her. I say to the Goths--with thousands who suffer the same
tribulation that I now undergo--"Enter our gates! Level our palaces to
the ground! Confound, if you will, in one common slaughter, we that are
victims with those that are tyrants! Your invasion will bring new lords
to the land. They cannot crush it more--they may oppress it less. Our
posterity may gain their rights by the sacrifice of lives that our
country has made worthless. Romans though we are, we are ready to
suffer and submit!"'
He stopped; for by this time he had lashed himself into fury. His eyes
glared, his cheeks flushed, his voice rose. Could he then have seen the
faintest vision of the destiny that future ages had in store for the
posterity of the race that now suffered throughout civilised Europe,
like him--could he have imagined how, in after years, the 'middle
class', despised in his day, was to rise to privilege and power; to hold
in its just hands the balance of the prosperity of nations; to crush
oppression and regulate rule; to soar in its mighty flight above thrones
and principalities, and rank and riches, apparently obedient, but really
commanding;--could he but have foreboded this, what a light must have
burst upon his gloom, what a hope must have soothed him in his despair!
To what further extremities his anger might have carried him, to what
proceedings the indignant Gordian, who still listened from his
concealment, might have had recourse, it is difficult to say; for the
complaints of the ill-fated landholder and the cogitations of the
authoritative bailiff were alike suddenly suspended by an uproar raging
at this moment round a carriage which had just emerged from the palace
we have elsewhere described.
This vehicle looked one mass of silver. Embroidered silk curtains
fluttered all around it, gold ornaments studded its polished sides, and
it held no less a person than the nobleman who had feasted the people
with baskets of meat. This fact had become known to the rabble before
the palace gates. Such an opportunity of showing their exultation in
their bondage, their real servility in their imaginary independence, was
not to be lost; and accordingly they let loose such a torrent of
clamorous gratitude on their entertainer's appearance, that a stranger
in Rome would have thought the city in revolt. They leapt, they ran,
they danced round the prancing horses, they flung their empty baskets
into the air, and patted approvingly their 'fair round bellies'. From
every side, as the carriage moved on, they gained fresh recruits and
acquired new importance. The timid fled before them, the noisy shouted
with them, the bold plunged into their ranks; and the constant burden of
their rejoicing chorus was--'Health to the noble Pomponius! Prosperity
to the senators of Rome, who feast us with their food and give us the
freedom of their theatres! Glory to Pomponius! Glory to the senators!'
Fate seemed on this day to take pleasure in pampering the insatiable
curiosity of Gordian, the bailiff. The cries of the multitude had
scarcely died away in the distance, as they followed the departing
carriage, when the voices of two men, pitched to a low, confidential
tone, reached his ear from the opposite side of the pillar. He peeped
cautiously round, and saw that they were priests.
'What an eternal jester is that Pomponius!' said one voice. 'He is
going to receive absolution, and he journeys in his chariot of state, as
if he were preparing to celebrate his triumph, instead of to confess his
sins!'
'Has he committed, then, a fresh imprudence?'
'Alas, yes! For a senator he is dreadfully wanting in caution! A few
days since, in a fit of passion, he flung a drinking-cup at one of his
female slaves. The girl died on the spot, and her brother, who is also
in his service, threatened immediate vengeance. To prevent disagreeable
consequences to his body, Pomponius has sent the fellow to his estates
in Egypt; and now, from the same precaution for the welfare of his soul,
he goes to demand absolution from our holy and beneficent Church.'
'I am afraid these incessant absolutions, granted to men who are too
careless even to make a show of repentance for their crimes, will
prejudice us with the people at large.'
'Of what consequence are the sentiments of the people while we have
their rulers on our side! Absolution is the sorcery that binds these
libertines of Rome to our will. We know what converted Constantine--
politic flattery and ready absolution; the people will tell you it was
the sign of the Cross.'
'It is true this Pomponius is rich, and may increase our revenues, but
still I fear the indignation of the people.'
'Fear nothing: think how long their old institutions imposed on them,
and then doubt, if you can, that we may shape them to our wishes as we
will. Any deceptions will be successful with a mob, if the instrument
employed to forward them be a religion.'
The voices ceased. Gordian, who still cherished a vague intention of
denouncing the fugitive landholder to the senatorial authorities,
employed the liberty afforded to his attention by the silence of the
priests in turning to look after his intended victim. To his surprise
he saw that the man had left the auditors to whom he had before
addressed himself, and was engaged in earnest conversation in another
part of the portico, with an individual who seemed to have recently
joined him, and whose appearance was so remarkable that the bailiff had
moved a few steps forwards to gain a nearer view of him, when he was
once more arrested by the voices of the priests.
Irresolute for an instant to which party to devote his unscrupulous
attention, he returned mechanically to his old position. Ere long,
however, his anxiety to hear the mysterious communications proceeding
between the landholder and his friend overbalanced his delight in
penetrating the theological secrets of the priests. He turned once
more, but to his astonishment the objects of his curiosity had
disappeared. He stepped to the outside of the portico and looked for
them in every direction, but they were nowhere to be seen. Peevish and
disappointed, he returned as a last resource to the pillar where he had
left the priests, but the time consumed in his investigations after one
party had been fatal to his reunion with the other. The churchmen were
gone.
Sufficiently punished for his curiosity by his disappointment, the
bailiff walked doggedly off towards the Pincian Hill. Had he turned in
the contrary direction, towards the Basilica of St. Peter, he would have
found himself once more in the neighbourhood of the landholder and his
remarkable friend, and would have gained that acquaintance with the
subjects of their conversation, which we intend that the reader shall
acquire in the course of the next chapter.
CHAPTER 4. THE CHURCH.
In the year 324, on the locality assigned by rumour to the martyrdom of
St. Peter, and over the ruins of the Circus of Nero, Constantine erected
the church called the Basilica of St. Peter.
For twelve centuries, this building, raised by a man infamous for his
murders and his tyrannies, stood uninjured amid the shocks which during
that long period devastated the rest of the city. After that time it was
removed, tottering to its base from its own reverend and illustrious
age, by Pope Julius II, to make way for the foundations of the modern
church.
It is towards this structure of twelve hundred years' duration, erected
by hands stained with blood, and yet preserved as a star of peace in the
midst of stormy centuries of war, that we would direct the reader's
attention. What art has done for the modern church, time has effected
for the ancient. If the one is majestic to the eye by its grandeur, the
other is hallowed to the memory by its age.
As this church by its rise commemorated the triumphant establishment of
Christianity as the religion of Rome, so in its progress it reflected
every change wrought in the spirit of the new worship by the ambition,
the prodigality, or the frivolity of the priests. At first it stood
awful and imposing, beautiful in all its parts as the religion for whose
glory it was built. Vast porphyry colonnades decorated its approaches,
and surrounded a fountain whose waters issued from the representation of
a gigantic pine-tree in bronze. Its double rows of aisles were each
supported by forty-eight columns of precious marble. Its flat ceiling
was adorned with beams of gilt metal, rescued from the pollution of
heathen temples. Its walls were decorated with large paintings of
religious subjects, and its tribunal was studded with elegant mosaics.
Thus it rose, simple and yet sublime, awful and yet alluring; in this
its beginning, a type of the dawn of the worship which it was elevated
to represent. But when, flushed with success, the priests seized on
Christianity as their path to politics and their introduction to power,
the aspect of the church gradually began to change. As, slowly and
insensibly, ambitious man heaped the garbage of his mysteries, his
doctrines, and his disputes, about the pristine purity of the structure
given him by God, so, one by one, gaudy adornments and meretricious
alterations arose to sully the once majestic basilica, until the
threatening and reproving apparition of the pagan Julian, when both
Church and churchmen received in their corrupt progress a sudden and
impressive check.
The short period of the revival of idolatry once passed over, the
priests, unmoved by the warning they had received, returned with renewed
vigour to confuse that which both in their Gospel and their Church had
been once simple. Day by day they put forth fresh treatises, aroused
fierce controversies, subsided into new sects; and day by day they
altered more and more the once noble aspect of the ancient basilica.
They hung their nauseous relics on its mighty walls, they stuck their
tiny tapers about its glorious pillars, they wreathed their tawdry
fringes around its massive altars. Here they polished, there they
embroidered. Wherever there was a window, they curtained it with gaudy
cloths; wherever there was a statue, they bedizened it with artificial
flowers; wherever there was a solemn recess, they outraged its religious
gloom with intruding light; until (arriving at the period we write of)
they succeeded so completely in changing the aspect of the building,
that it looked, within, more like a vast pagan toyshop than a Christian
church. Here and there, it is true, a pillar or an altar rose
unencumbered as of old, appearing as much at variance with the frippery
that surrounded it as a text of Scripture quoted in a sermon of the
time. But as regarded the general aspect of the basilica, the decent
glories of its earlier days seemed irrevocably departed and destroyed.
After what has been said of the edifice, the reader will have little
difficulty in imagining that the square in which it stood lost whatever
elevation of character it might once have possessed, with even greater
rapidity than the church itself. If the cathedral now looked like an
immense toyshop, assuredly its attendant colonnades had the appearance
of the booths of an enormous fair.
The day, whose decline we have hinted at in the preceding chapter, was
fast verging towards its close, as the inhabitants of the streets on the
western bank of the Tiber prepared to join the crowds that they beheld
passing by their windows in the direction of the Basilica of St. Peter.
The cause of this sudden confluence of the popular current in once
common direction was made sufficiently apparent to all inquirers who
happened to be near a church or a public building, by the appearance in
such situations of a large sheet of vellum elaborately illuminated,
raised on a high pole, and guarded from contact with the inquisitive
rabble by two armed soldiers. The announcements set forth in these
strange placards were all of the same nature and directed to the same
end. In each of them the Bishop of Rome informed his 'pious and
honourable brethren', the inhabitants of the city, that, as the next
days was the anniversary of the Martyrdom of St. Luke, the vigil would
necessarily be held on that evening in the Basilica of St. Peter; and
that, in consideration of the importance of the occasion, there would be
exhibited, before the commencement of the ceremony, those precious
relics connected with the death of the saint, which had become the
inestimable inheritance of the Church; and which consisted of a branch
of the olive-tree to which St. Luke was hung, a piece of the noose--
including the knot--which had been passed round his neck, and a picture
of the Apotheosis of the Virgin painted by his own hand. After some
sentences expressive of lamentation for the sufferings of the saint,
which nobody read, and which it is unnecessary to reproduce here, the
proclamation went on to state that a sermon would be preached in the
course of the vigil, and that at a later hour the great chandelier,
containing two thousand four hundred lamps, would be lit to illuminate
the church. Finally, the worthy bishop called upon all members of his
flock, in consideration of the solemnity of the day, to abstain from
sensual pleasures, in order that they might the more piously and
worthily contemplate the sacred objects submitted to their view, and
digest the spiritual nourishment to be offered to their understandings.
From the specimen we have already given of the character of the populace
of Rome, it will perhaps be unnecessary to say that the great
attractions presented by this theological bill of fare were the relics
and the chandelier. Pulpit eloquence and vigil solemnities alone must
have long exhibited their more sober allurements, before they could have
drawn into the streets a fiftieth part of the immense crowd that now
hurried towards the desecrated basilica. Indeed, so vast was the
assemblage soon congregated, that the advanced ranks of sightseers had
already filled the church to overflowing, before those in the rear had
come within view of the colonnades.
However dissatisfied the unsuccessful portion of the citizens might feel
at their exclusion from the church, they found a powerful counter-
attraction in the amusements going forward in the Place, the occupants
of which seemed thoroughly regardless of the bishop's admonitions upon
the sobriety of behaviour due to the solemnity of the day. As if in
utter defiance of the decency and order recommended by the clergy,
popular exhibitions of all sorts were set up on the broad flagstones of
the great space before the church. Street dancing-girls exercised at
every available spot those 'gliding gyrations' so eloquently condemned
by the worthy Ammianus Marcellinus of orderly and historical memory.
Booths crammed with relics of doubtful authenticity, baskets filled with
neat manuscript abstracts of furiously controversial pamphlets, pagan
images regenerated into portraits of saints, pictorial representations
of Arians writhing in damnation, and martyrs basking in haloes of
celestial light, tempted, in every direction, the more pious among the
spectators. Cooks perambulated with their shops on their backs; rival
slave-merchants shouted petitions for patronage; wine-sellers taught
Bacchanalian philosophy from the tops of their casks; poets recited
compositions for sale; sophisters held arguments destined to convert
the wavering and perplex the ignorant.
Incessant motion and incessant noise seemed to be the sole compensations
sought by the multitude for the disappointment of exclusion from the
church. If a stranger, after reading the proclamation of the day, had
proceeded to the basilica, to feast his eyes on the contemplation of the
illustrious aggregate of humanity, entitled by the bishop 'his pious and
honourable brethren,' he must, on mixing at this moment with the
assemblage, have either doubted the truth of the episcopal appellation,
or have given the citizens credit for that refinement of intrinsic worth
which is of too elevated a nature to influence the character of the
outward man.
At the time when the sun set, nothing could be more picturesque than the
distant view of this joyous scene. The deep red rays of the departing
luminary cast their radiance, partly from behind the church, over the
vast multitude in the Place. Brightly and rapidly the rich light roved
over the waters that leaped towards it from the fountain in all the
loveliness of natural and evanescent form. Bathed in that brilliant
glow, the smooth porphyry colonnades reflected, chameleon like, ethereal
and varying hues; the white marble statues became suffused in a delicate
rose-colour, and the sober-tinted trees gleamed in the innermost of
their leafy depths as if steeped in the exhalations of a golden mist.
While, contrasting strangely with the wondrous radiance around them, the
huge bronze pine-tree in the middle of the Place, and the wide front of
the basilica, rose up in gloomy shadow, indefinite and exaggerated,
lowering like evil spirits over the joyous beauty of the rest of the
scene, and casting their great depths of shade into the midst of the
light whose dominion they despised. Beheld from a distance, this wild
combination of vivid brightness and solemn gloom; these buildings, at
one place darkened till they looked gigantic, at another lightened till
they appeared ethereal; these crowded groups, seeming one great moving
mass gleaming at this point in radiant light, obscured at that in thick
shadow, made up a whole so incongruous and yet so beautiful, so
grotesque and yet so sublime, that the scene looked, for the moment,
more like some inhabited meteor, half eclipsed by its propinquity to
earth, than a mortal and material prospect.
The beauties of this atmospheric effect were of far too serious and
sublime a nature to interest the multitude in the Place. Out of the
whole assemblage, but two men watched that glorious sunset with even an
appearance of the admiration and attention which it deserved. One was
the landholder whose wrongs were related in the preceding chapter--the
other his remarkable friend.
These two men formed a singular contrast to each other, both in
demeanour and appearance, as they gazed forth upon the crimson heaven.
The landholder was an under-sized, restless-looking man, whose features,
naturally sharp, were now distorted by a fixed expression of misery and
discontent. His quick, penetrating glance wandered incessantly from
place to place, perceiving all things, but resting on none. In his
attention to the scene before him, he appeared to have been led more by
the influence of example than by his own spontaneous feelings; for ever
and anon he looked impatiently round upon his friend as if expecting him
to speak--but no word or movement escaped his thoughtful companion.
Occupied exclusively in his own contemplations, he appeared wholly
insensible to any ordinary outward appeal.
In age and appearance this individual was in the decline of life; for he
had numbered sixty years, his hair was completely grey, and his face was
covered with deep wrinkles. Yet, in spite of these disadvantages, he
was in the highest sense of the word a handsome man. Though worn and
thin, his features were still bold and regular; and there was an
elevation about the habitual mournfulness of his expression, and an
intelligence about his somewhat severe and earnest eyes, that bore
eloquent testimony to the superiority of his intellectual powers. As he
now stood gazing fixedly out into the glowing sky, his tall, meagre
figure half supported upon his staff, his lips firmly compressed, his
brow slightly frowning, and his attitude firm and motionless, the most
superficial observer must have felt immediately that he looked on no
ordinary being. The history of a life of deep thought--perhaps of long
sorrow--seemed written in every lineament of his meditative countenance;
and there was a natural dignity in his manner, which evidently
restrained his restless companion from offering any determined
interruption to the course of his reflections.
Slowly and gorgeously the sun had continued to wane in the horizon until
he was now lost to view. As his last rays sunk behind the distant
hills, the stranger started from his reverie and approached the
landholder, pointing with his staff towards the fast-fading brightness
of the western sky.
'Probus,' said he, in a low, melancholy voice, 'as I looked on that
sunset I thought on the condition of the Church.'
'I see little in the Church to think of, or in the sunset to observe,'
replied his companion.
'How pure, how vivid,' murmured the other, scarcely heeding the
landholder's remark,' was the light which that sun cast upon this earth
at our feet! How nobly for a time its brightness triumphed over the
shadows around; and yet, in spite of the promise of that radiance, how
swiftly did it fade ere long in its conflict with the gloom--how
thoroughly, even now, has it departed from the earth, and withdrawn the
beauty of its glory from the heavens! Already the shadows are
lengthening around us, and shrouding in their darkness every object in
the Place. But a short hour hence, and--should no moon arise--the gloom
of night will stretch unresisted over Rome!'
'To what purpose do you tell me this?'
'Are you not reminded, by what we have observed, of the course of the
worship which it is our privilege to profess? Does not that first
beautiful light denote its pure and perfect rise; that short conflict
between the radiance and the gloom, its successful preservation, by the
Apostles and the Fathers; that rapid fading of the radiance, its
desecration in later times; and the gloom which now surrounds us, the
destruction which has encompassed it in this age we live in?--a
destruction which nothing can avert but a return to that pure first
faith that should now be the hope of our religion, as the moon is the
hope of night!'
'How should we reform? Do people who have no liberties care about a
religion? Who is to teach them?'
'I have--I will. It is the purpose of my life to restore to them the
holiness of the ancient Church; to rescue them from the snare of
traitors to the faith, whom men call priests. They shall learn through
me that the Church knew no adornment once, but the presence of the pure;
that the priest craved no finer vestment than his holiness; that the
Gospel, which once taught humility and now raises dispute, was in former
days the rule of faith--sufficient for all wants, powerful over all
difficulties. Through me they shall know that in times past it was the
guardian of the heart; through me they shall see that in times present
it is the plaything of the proud; through me they shall fear that in
times future it may become the exile of the Church! To this task I have
vowed myself; to overthrow this idolatry--which, like another paganism,
rises among us with its images, its relics, its jewels, and its gold--I
will devote my child, my life, my energies, and my possessions. From
this attempt I will never turn aside--from this determination I will
never flinch. While I have a breath of life in me, I will persevere in
restoring to this abandoned city the true worship of the Most High!'
He ceased abruptly. The intensity of his agitation seemed suddenly to
deny to him the faculty of speech. Every muscle in the frame of that
stern, melancholy man quivered at the immortal promptings of the soul
within him. There was something almost feminine in his universal
susceptibility to the influence of one solitary emotion. Even the
rough, desperate landholder felt awed by the enthusiasm of the being
before him, and forgot his wrongs, terrible as they were--and his
misery, poignant as it was--as he gazed upon his companion's face.
For some minutes neither of the men said more. Soon, however, the last
speaker calmed his agitation with the facility of a man accustomed to
stifle the emotions that he cannot crush, and advancing to the
landholder, took him sorrowfully by the hand.
'I see, Probus, that I have amazed you,' said he; 'but the Church is the
only subject on which I have no discretion. In all other matters I have
conquered the rashness of my early manhood; in this I have to wrestle
with my hastier nature still. When I look on the mockeries that are
acting around us; when I behold a priesthood deceivers, a people
deluded, a religion defiled, then, I confess it, my indignation
overpowers my patience, and I burn to destroy, where I ought only to
hope to reform.'
'I knew you always violent of imagination; but when I last saw you your
enthusiasm was love. Your wife--'
'Peace! She deceived me!'
'Your child--'
'Lives with me at Rome.'
'I remember her an infant, when, fourteen years since, I was your
neighbour in Gaul. On my departure from the province, you had just
returned from a journey into Italy, unsuccessful in your attempts to
discover there a trace either of your parents, or of that elder brother
whose absence you were wont so continually to lament. Tell me, have
you, since that period, discovered the members of your ancient
household? Hitherto you have been so occupied in listening to the
history of my wrongs that you have scarcely spoken of the changes in
your life since we last met.'
'If, Probus, I have been silent to you concerning myself, it is because
for me retrospection has little that attracts. While yet it was in my
power to return to those parents whom I deserted in my boyhood, I
thought not of repentance; and now that they must be but too surely lost
to me, my yearning towards them is of no avail. Of my brother, from
whom I parted in a moment of childish jealousy and anger, and whose
pardon and love I would give up even my ambition to acquire, I have
never yet discovered a trace. Atonement to those whom I injured in
early life is a privilege denied to the prayers of my age. From my
parents and my brother I departed unblest, and unforgiven by them I feel
that I am doomed to die! My life has been careless, useless, godless,
passing from rapine and violence to luxury and indolence, and leading me
to the marriage which I exulted in when I last saw you, but which I now
feel was unworthy alike in its motives and its results. But blessed and
thrice blessed by that last calamity of my wicked existence, for it
opened my eyes to the truth--it made a Christian of me while I was yet
alive!'
'Is it thus that the Christian can view his afflictions? I would, then,
that I were a Christian like you!' murmured the landholder, in low,
earnest tones.
'It was in those first days, Probus,' continued the other, 'when I found
myself deserted and dishonoured, left alone to be the guardian of my
helpless child, exiled for ever from a home that I had myself forsaken,
that I repented me in earnest of my misdeeds, that I sought wisdom from
the book of salvation, and the conduct of life from the Fathers of the
Church. It was at that time that I determined to devote my child, like
Samuel of old, to the service of heaven, and myself to the reformation
of our degraded worship. As I have already told you, I forsook my abode
and changed my name (remember it is as 'Numerian' that you must
henceforth address me), that of my former self no remains might be left,
that of my former companions not one might ever discover and tempt me
again. With incessant care have I shielded my daughter from the
contamination of the world. As a precious jewel in a miser's hands she
has been watched and guarded in her father's house. Her destiny is to
soothe the afflicted, to watch the sick, to succour the forlorn, when I,
her teacher, have restored to the land the dominion of its ancient faith
and the guidance of its faultless Gospel. We have neither of us an
affection or a hope that can bind us to the things of earth. Our hearts
look both towards heaven; our expectations are only from on high!'
'Do not set your hopes too firmly on your child. Remember how the
nobles of Rome have destroyed the household I once had, and tremble for
your own.'
'I have no fear for my daughter; she is cared for in my absence by one
who is vowed to aid me in my labours for the Church. It is now nearly a
year since I first met Ulpius, and from that time forth he has devoted
himself to my service and watched over my child.'
'Who is this Ulpius, that you should put such faith in him?'
'He is a man of age like mine. I found him, like me, worn down by the
calamities of his early life, and abandoned, as I had once been, to the
delusions of the pagan gods. He was desolate, suffering, forlorn, and I
had pity on him in his misery. I proved to him that the worship he
still professed was banished for its iniquities from the land; that the
religion which had succeeded it had become defiled by man, and that
there remained but one faith for him to choose, if he would be saved--
the faith of the early Church. He heard me and was converted. From
that moment he has served my patiently and helped me willingly. Under
the roof where I assemble the few who as yet are true believers, he is
always the first to come and the last to remain. No word of anger has
ever crossed his lips--no look of impatience has ever appeared in his
eyes. Though sorrowful, he is gentle; though suffering, he is
industrious. I have trusted him with all I possess, and I glory in my
credulity! Ulpius is incorruptible!'
'And your daughter?--is Ulpius reverenced by her as he is respected by
you?'
'She knows that her duty is to love whom I love, and to avoid whom I
avoid. Can you imagine that a Christian virgin has any feelings
disobedient to her father's wishes? Come to my house; judge with your
own eyes of my daughter and my companion. You, whose misfortunes have
left you no home, shall find one, if you will, with me. Come then and
labour with me in my great undertaking! You will withdraw your mind
from the contemplation of your woes, and merit by your devotion the
favour of the Most High.'
'No, Numerian, I will still be independent, even of my friends! Nor
Rome nor Italy are abiding-places for me. I go to another land to abide
among another people, until the arms of a conqueror shall have restored
freedom to the brave and protection to the honest throughout the
countries of the Empire.'
'Probus, I implore you stay!'
'Never! My determination is taken, Numerian--farewell!'
For a few minutes Numerian stood motionless, gazing wistfully in the
direction taken by his companion on his departure. At first an
expression of grief and pity softened the austerity which seemed the
habitual characteristic of his countenance when in repose, but soon
these milder and tenderer feelings appeared to vanish from his heart as
suddenly as they had arisen; his features reassumed their customary
sternness, and he muttered to himself as he mixed with the crowd
struggling onwards in the direction of the basilica: 'Let him depart
unregretted; he has denied himself to the service of his Maker. He
should no longer be my friend.'
In this sentence lay the index to the character of the man. His
existence was one vast sacrifice, one scene of intrepid self-immolation.
Although, in the brief hints at the events of his life which he had
communicated to his friend, he had exaggerated the extent of his errors,
he had by no means done justice to the fervour of his penitence--a
penitence which outstripped the usual boundaries of repentance, and only
began in despair to terminate in fanaticism. His desertion of his
father's house (into the motives of which it is not our present
intention to enter), and his long subsequent existence of violence and
excess, indisposed his naturally strong passions to submit to the
slightest restraint. In obedience to their first impulses, he
contracted, at a mature age, a marriage with a woman thoroughly unworthy
of the ardent admiration that she had inspired. When he found himself
deceived and dishonoured by her, the shock of such an affliction
thrilled through his whole being--crushed all his energies--struck him
prostrate, heart and mind, at one blow. The errors of his youth,
committed in his prosperity with moral impunity, reacted upon him in his
adversity with an influence fatal to his future peace. His repentance
was darkened by despondency; his resolutions were unbrightened by hope.
He flew to religion as the suicide flies to the knife--in despair.
Leaving all remaining peculiarities in Numerian's character to be
discussed at a future opportunity, we will now follow him in his passage
through the crowd, to the entrance of the basilica--continuing to
designate him, here and elsewhere, by the name which he had assumed on
his conversion, and by which he had insisted on being addressed during
his interview with the fugitive landholder.
Although at the commencement of his progress towards the church, our
enthusiast found himself placed among the hindermost of the members of
the advancing throng, he soon contrived so thoroughly to outstrip his
dilatory and discursive neighbours as to gain, with little delay, the
steps of the sacred building. Here, in common with many others, he was
compelled to stop, while those nearest the basilica squeezed their way
through its stately doors. In such a situation his remarkable figure
could not fail to be noticed, and he was silently recognised by many of
the bystanders, some of whom looked on him with wonder, and some with
aversion. Nobody, however, approached or spoke to him. Every one felt
the necessity of shunning a man whose bold and daily exposures of the
abuses of the Church placed in incessant peril his liberty, and even his
life.
Among the bystanders who surrounded Numerian, there were nevertheless
two who did not remain content with carelessly avoiding any
communication with the intrepid and suspected reformer. These two men
belonged to the lowest order of the clergy, and appeared to be occupied
in cautiously watching the actions and listening to the conversation of
the individuals immediately around them. The instant they beheld
Numerian they moved so as to elude his observation, taking care at the
same time to occupy such a position as enabled them to keep in view the
object of their evident distrust.
'Look, Osius,' said one, 'that man is here again!'
'And doubtless with the same motives which brought him here yesterday,'
replied the other. 'You will see that he will again enter the church,
listen to the service, retire to his little chapel near the Pincian
Mount, and there, before his ragged mob of adherents, attack the
doctrines which our brethren have preached, as we know he did last
night, and as we suspect he will continue to do until the authorities
think proper to give the signal for his imprisonment.'
'I marvel that he should have been permitted to persist so long a time
as he has in his course of contumacy towards the Church. Have we not
evidence enough in his writings alone to convict him of heresy? The
carelessness of the bishop upon such a matter as this is quite
inexplicable!'
'You should consider, Numerian not being a priest, that the carelessness
about our interests lies more with the senate than the bishop. What
time our nobles can spare from their debaucheries has been lately given
to discussions on the conduct of the Emperor in retiring to Ravenna, and
will now be dedicated to penetrating the basis of this rumour about the
Goths. Besides, even were they at liberty, what care the senate about
theological disputes? They only know this Numerian as a citizen of Rome,
a man of some influence and possessions, and, consequently, a person of
political importance as a member of the population. In addition to
which, it would be no easy task for us at the present moment to impugn
the doctrines broached by our assailant; for the fellow has a
troublesome facility of supporting what he says by the Bible. Believe
me, in this matter, our only way of righting ourselves will be to
convict him of scandal against the highest dignitaries of the Church.'
'The order that we have lately received to track his movements and
listen to his discourses, leads me to believe that our superiors are of
your opinion.'
'Whether my convictions are correct or not, of this I feel assured--that
his days of liberty are numbered. It was but a few hours ago that I saw
the bishop's chamberlain's head-assistant, and he told me that he had
heard, through the crevice of a door--'
'Hush! he moves; he is pressing forward to enter the church. You can
tell me what you were about to say as we follow him. Quick! let us mix
with the crowd.'
Ever enthusiastic in the performance of their loathsome duties, these
two discreet pastors of a Christian flock followed Numerian with the
most elaborate caution into the interior of the sacred building.
Although the sun still left a faint streak of red in the western sky,
and the moon had as yet scarcely risen, the great chandelier of two
thousand four hundred lamps, mentioned by the bishop in his address to
the people, was already alight. In the days of its severe and sacred
beauty, the appearance of the church would have suffered fatally by this
blaze of artificial brilliancy; but now that the ancient character of
the basilica was completely changed, now that from a solemn temple it
had been altered to the semblance of a luxurious palace, it gained
immensely by its gaudy illumination. Not an ornament along the vast
extent of its glorious nave but glittered in vivid distinctness in the
dazzling light that poured downwards from the roof. The gilded rafters,
the smooth inlaid marble pillars, the rich hangings of the windows, the
jewelled candlesticks on the altars, the pictures, the statues, the
bronzes, the mosaics, each and all glowed with a steady and luxurious
transparency absolutely intoxicating to the eye. Not a trace of wear,
not a vestige of tarnish now appeared on any object. Each portion of
the nave to which the attention was directed appeared too finely,
spotlessly radiant, ever to have been touched by mortal hands.
Entranced and bewildered, the observation roamed over the surface of the
brilliant scene, until, wearied by the unbroken embellishment of the
prospect, it wandered for repose upon the dimly lighted aisles, and
dwelt with delight upon the soft shadows that hovered about their
distant pillars, and the gliding forms that peopled their dusky
recesses, or loitered past their lofty walls.
At the moment when Numerian entered the basilica, a part of the service
had just concluded. The last faint echo from the voices of the choir
still hung upon the incense-laden air, and the vast masses of the
spectators were still grouped in their listening and various attitudes,
as the devoted reformer looked forth upon the church. Even he, stern as
he was, seemed for a moment subdued by the ineffable enchantment of the
scene; but ere long, as if displeased with his own involuntary emotions
of admiration, his brow contracted, and he sighed heavily, as (still
followed by the attentive spies) he sought the comparative seclusion of
the aisles.
During the interval between the divisions of the service, the
congregation occupied themselves in staring at the relics, which were
enclosed in a silver cabinet with crystal doors, and placed on the top
of the high altar. Although it was impossible to obtain a satisfactory
view of these ecclesiastical treasures, they nevertheless employed the
attention of every one until the appearance of a priest in the pulpit
gave signal of the commencement of the sermon, and admonished all those
who had seats to secure them without delay.
Passing through the ranks of the auditors of the sermon--some of whom
were engaged in counting the lights in the chandelier, to be certain
that the bishop had not defrauded them of one out of the two thousand
four hundred lamps; others in holding whispered conversations, and
opening small boxes of sweetmeats--we again conduct the reader to the
outside of the church.
The assemblage here had by this time much diminished; the shadows flung
over the ground by the lofty colonnades had deepened and increased; and
in many of the more remote recesses of the Place hardly a human being
was to be observed. At one of these extremities, where the pillars
terminated in the street and the obscurity was most intense, stood a
solitary old man keeping himself cautiously concealed in the darkness,
and looking out anxiously upon the public way immediately before him.
He had waited but a short time when a handsome chariot, preceded by a
body-guard of gaily-attired slaves, stopped within a few paces of his
lurking-place, and the voice of the person it contained pronounced
audibly the following words:--
'No! no! Drive on--we are later than I thought. If I stay to see this
illumination of the basilica, I shall not be in time to receive my
guests for to-night's banquet. Besides, this inestimable kitten of the
breed most worshipped by the ancient Egyptians has already taken cold,
and I would not for the world expose the susceptible animal any longer
than is necessary to the dampness of the night-air. Drive on, good
Carrio, drive on!'
The old man scarcely waited for the conclusion of this speech before he
ran up to the chariot, where he was immediately confronted by two
heads--one that of Vetranio the senator, the other that of a glossy
black kitten adorned with a collar of rubies, and half enveloped in its
master's ample robes. Before the astonished noble could articulate a
word, the man whispered in hoarse, hurried accents, 'I am Ulpius--
dismiss your servants--I have something important to say!'
'Ha! my worthy Ulpius! You have a most unhappy faculty of delivering a
message with the manner of an assassin! But I must pardon your
unpleasant abruptness in consideration of your diligence. My excellent
Carrio, If you value my approbation, remove your companions and yourself
out of hearing!'
The freedman yielded instant obedience to his master's mandate. The
following conversation then took place, the strange man opening it
thus:--
'You remember your promise?'
'I do.'
'Upon your honour, as a nobleman and a senator, you are prepared to
abide by it whenever it is necessary?'
'I am.'
'Then at the dawn of morning meet me at the private gate of your palace
garden, and I will conduct you to Antonina's bedchamber.'
'The time will suit me. But why at the dawn of morning?'
'Because the Christian dotard will keep a vigil until midnight, which
the girl will most probably attend. I wished to tell you this at your
palace, but I heard there that you had gone to Aricia, and would return
by way of the basilica; so I posted myself to intercept you thus.'
'Industrious Ulpius!'
'Remember your promise!'
Vetranio leaned forward to reply, but Ulpius was gone.
As the senator again commanded his equipage to move on, he looked
anxiously around him, as if once more expecting to see his strange
adherent still lurking near the chariot. He only perceived, however, a
man whom he did not know, followed by two other, walking rapidly past
him. They were Numerian and the spies.
'At last, my projects are approaching consummation,' exclaimed Vetranio
to himself, as he and his kitten rolled off in the chariot. 'It is well
that I thought of securing possession of Julia's villa to-day, for I
shall now, assuredly, want to use it to-morrow. Jupiter! What a mass
of dangers, contradictions, and mysteries encompass this affair! When I
think that I, who pride myself on my philosophy, have quitted Ravenna,
borrowed a private villa, leagued myself with an uncultivated plebeian,
and all for the sake of a girl who has already deceived my expectations
by gaining me as a music-master without admitting me as a lover, I am
positively astonished at my own weakness! Still it must be owned that
the complexion my adventure has lately assumed renders it of some
interest in itself. The mere pleasure of penetrating the secrets of
this Numerian's household is by no means the least among the numerous
attraction of my design. How has he gained his influence over the girl?
Why does he keep her in such strict seclusion? Who is this old half-
frantic, unceremonious man-monster calling himself Ulpius; refusing all
reward for his villainy; raving about a return to the old religion of
the gods; and exulting in the promise he has extorted from me, as a good
pagan, to support the first restoration of the ancient worship that may
be attempted in Rome? Where does he come from? Why does he outwardly
profess himself a Christian? What sent him into Numerian's service? By
the girdle of Venus! everything connected with the girl is as
incomprehensible as herself! But patience--patience! A few hours more,
and these mysteries will be revealed. In the meantime, let me think of
my banquet, and of its presiding deity, the Nightingale Sauce!'
CHAPTER 5. ANTONINA.
Who that has been at Rome does not remember with delight the attractions
of the Pincian Hill? Who, after toiling through the wonders of the
dark, melancholy city, has not been revived by a visit to its shady
walks, and by breathing its fragrant breezes? Amid the solemn
mournfulness that reigns over declining Rome, this delightful elevation
rises light, airy, and inviting, at once a refreshment to the body and a
solace to the spirit. From its smooth summit the city is seen in its
utmost majesty, and the surrounding country in its brightest aspect.
The crimes and miseries of Rome seem deterred from approaching its
favoured soil; it impresses the mind as a place set apart by common
consent for the presence of the innocent and the joyful--as a scene that
rest and recreation keep sacred from the intrusion of tumult and toil.
Its appearance in modern days is the picture of its character for ages
past. Successive wars might dull its beauties for a time, but peace
invariably restored them in all their pristine loveliness. The old
Romans called it 'The Mount of Gardens'. Throughout the disasters of
the Empire and the convulsions of the Middle Ages, it continued to merit
its ancient appellation, and a 'Mount of Gardens' it still triumphantly
remains to the present day.
At the commencement of the fifth century the magnificence of the Pincian
Hill was at its zenith. Were it consistent with the conduct of our story
to dwell upon the glories of its palaces and its groves, its temples and
its theatres, such a glowing prospect of artificial splendour, aided by
natural beauty, might be spread before the reader as would tax his
credulity, while it excited his astonishment. This task, however, it is
here unnecessary to attempt. It is not for the wonders of ancient
luxury and taste, but for the abode of the zealous and religious
Numerian, that we find it now requisite to arouse interest and engage
attention.
At the back of the Flaminian extremity of the Pincian Hill, and
immediately overlooking the city wall, stood, at the period of which we
write, a small but elegantly built house, surrounded by a little garden
of its own, and protected at the back by the lofty groves and
outbuildings of the palace of Vetranio the senator. This abode had been
at one time a sort of summer-house belonging to the former proprietor of
a neighbouring mansion.
Profligate necessities, however, had obliged the owner to part with this
portion of his possessions, which was purchased by a merchant well known
to Numerian, who received it as a legacy at his friend's death.
Disgusted, as soon as his reforming projects took possession of his
mind, at the bare idea of propinquity to the ennobled libertines of
Rome, the austere Christian determined to abandon his inheritance, and
to sell it to another; but, at the repeated entreaties of his daughter,
he at length consented to change his purpose, and sacrifice his
antipathy to his luxurious neighbours to his child's youthful attachment
to the beauties of Nature as displayed in his legacy on the Pincian
Mount. In this instance only did the natural affection of the father
prevail over the acquired severity of the reformer. Here he
condescended, for the first and the last time, to the sweet trivialities
of youth. Here, indulgent in spite of himself, he fixed his little
household, and permitted to his daughter her sole recreations of tending
the flowers in the garden and luxuriating in the loveliness of the
distant view.
******
The night has advanced an hour since the occurrence mentioned in the
preceding chapter. The clear and brilliant moonlight of Italy now
pervades every district of the glorious city, and bathes in its pure
effulgence the groves and palaces on the Pincian Mount. From the garden
of Numerian the irregular buildings of the great suburbs of Rome, the
rich undulating country beyond, and the long ranges of mountains in the
distance, are now all visible in the soft and luxurious light. Near the
spot which commands this view, not a living creature is to be seen on a
first examination; but on a more industrious and patient observation,
you are subsequently able to detect at one of the windows of Numerian's
house, half hidden by a curtain, the figure of a young girl.
Soon this solitary form approaches nearer to the eye. The moonbeams,
that have hitherto shone only upon the window, now illuminate other
objects. First they display a small, white arm; then a light, simple
robe; then a fair, graceful neck; and finally a bright, youthful,
innocent face, directed steadfastly towards the wide moon-brightened
prospect of the distant mountains.
For some time the girl remains in contemplation at her window. Then she
leaves her post, and almost immediately reappears at a door leading into
the garden. Her figure, as she advances towards the lawn before her, is
light and small--a natural grace and propriety appear in her movements--
she holds pressed to her bosom and half concealed by her robe, a gilt
lute. When she reaches a turf bank commanding the same view as the
window, she arranges her instrument upon her knees, and with something
of restraint in her manner gently touches the chords. Then, as if
alarmed at the sound she has produced, she glances anxiously around her,
apparently fearful of being overheard. Her large, dark, lustrous eyes
have in them an expression of apprehension; her delicate lips are half
parted; a sudden flush rises in her soft, olive complexion as she
examines every corner of the garden. Having completed her survey
without discovering any cause for the suspicions she seems to entertain,
she again employs herself over her instrument. Once more she strikes
the chords, and now with a bolder hand. The notes she produces resolve
themselves into a wild, plaintive, irregular melody, alternately rising
and sinking, as if swayed by the fickle influence of a summer wind.
These sounds are soon harmoniously augmented by the young minstrel's
voice, which is calm, still, and mellow, and adapts itself with
exquisite ingenuity to every arbitrary variation in the tone of the
accompaniment. The song that she has chosen is one of the fanciful odes
of the day. Its chief merit to her lies in its alliance to the strange
Eastern air which she heard at her first interview with the senator who
presented her with the lute. Paraphrased in English, the words of the
composition would run thus:--
THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC
I. Spirit, whose dominion reigns Over Music's thrilling strains, Whence
may be thy distant birth? Say what tempted thee to earth?
Mortal, listen: I was born In Creation's early years, Singing, 'mid the
stars of morn, `To the music of the spheres.
Once as, within the realms of space, I view'd this mortal planet roll, A
yearning towards they hapless race, Unbidden, filled my seraph soul!
Angels, who had watched my birth, Heard me sigh to sing to earth; 'Twas
transgression ne'er forgiv'n To forget my native heav'n; So they sternly
bade me go--Banish'd to the world below.
II. Exil'd here, I knew no fears; For, though darkness round me clung,
Though none heard me in the spheres, Earth had listeners while I sung.
Young spirits of the Spring sweet breeze Came thronging round me, soft
and coy, Light wood-nymphs sported in the trees, And laughing Echo leapt
for joy!
Brooding Woe and writhing Pain Soften'd at my gentle strain; Bounding
Joy, with footstep fleet, Ran to nestle at my feet; While, arous'd,
delighted Love Softly kiss'd me from above!
III. Since those years of early time, Faithful still to earth I've
sung; Flying through each distant clime, Ever welcome, ever young!
Still pleas'd, my solace I impart Where brightest hopes are scattered
dead; 'Tis mine--sweet gift!--to charm the heart, Though all its other
joys have fled!
Time, that withers all beside, Harmless past me loves to glide; Change,
that mortals must obey, Ne'er shall shake my gentle sway; Still 'tis
mine all hearts to move In eternity of love.
As the last sounds of her voice and her lute died softly away upon the
still night air, an indescribable elevation appeared in the girl's
countenance. She looked up rapturously into the far, star-bright sky;
her lip quivered, her dark eyes filled with tears, and her bosom heaved
with the excess of the emotions that the music and the scene inspired.
Then she gazed slowly around her, dwelling tenderly upon the fragrant
flower-beds that were the work of her own hands, and looking forth with
an expression half reverential, half ecstatic over the long, smooth,
shining plains, and the still, glorious mountains, that had so long been
the inspiration of her most cherished thoughts, and that now glowed
before her eyes, soft and beautiful as her dreams on her virgin couch.
Then, overpowered by the artless thoughts and innocent recollections
which on the magic wings of Nature and Night came wafted over her mind,
she bent down her head upon her lute, pressed her round, dimpled cheek
against its smooth frame, and drawing her fingers mechanically over its
strings, abandoned herself unreservedly to the reveries of maidenhood
and youth.
Such was the being devoted by her father's fatal ambition to a lifelong
banishment from all that is attractive in human art and beautiful in
human intellect! Such was the daughter whose existence was to be one
long acquaintance with mortal woe, one unvaried refusal of mortal
pleasure, whose thoughts were to be only of sermons and fasts, whose
action were to be confined to the binding up of strangers' wounds and
the drying of strangers' tears; whose life, in brief, was doomed to be
the embodiment of her father's austere ideal of the austere virgins of
the ancient Church!
Deprived of her mother, exiled from the companionship of others of her
age, permitted no familiarity with any living being, no sympathies with
any other heart, commanded but never indulged, rebuked but never
applauded, she must have sunk beneath the severities imposed on her by
her father, but for the venial disobedience committed in the pursuit of
the solitary pleasure procured for her by her lute. Vainly, in her
hours of study, did she read the fierce anathemas against love, liberty,
and pleasure, poetry, painting, and music, gold, silver, and precious
stones, which the ancient fathers had composed for the benefit of the
submissive congregations of former days; vainly did she imagine, during
those long hours of theological instruction, that her heart's forbidden
longings were banished and destroyed--that her patient and childlike
disposition was bowed in complete subserviency to the most rigorous of
her father's commands. No sooner were her interviews with Numerian
concluded than the promptings of that nature within us, which artifice
may warp but can never destroy, lured her into a forgetfulness of all
that she had heard and a longing for much that was forbidden. We live,
in this existence, but by the companionship of some sympathy,
aspiration, or pursuit, which serves us as our habitual refuge from the
tribulations we inherit from the outer world. The same feeling which led
Antonina in her childhood to beg for a flower-garden, in her girlhood
induced her to gain possession of a lute.
The passion for music which prompted her visit to Vetranio, which alone
saved her affections from pining in the solitude imposed on them, and
which occupied her leisure hours in the manner we have already
described, was an inheritance of her birth.
Her Spanish mother had sung to her, hour after hour, in her cradle, for
the short time during which she was permitted to watch over her child.
The impression thus made on the dawning faculties of the infant, nothing
ever effaced. Though her earliest perception were greeted only by the
sight of her father's misery; though the form which his despairing
penitence soon assumed doomed her to a life of seclusion and an
education of admonition, the passionate attachment to the melody of
sound, inspired by her mother's voice--almost imbibed at her mother's
breast--lived through all neglect, and survived all opposition. It
found its nourishment in childish recollections, in snatches of street
minstrelsy heard through her window, in the passage of the night winds
of winter through the groves on the Pincian Mount, and received its
rapturous gratification in the first audible sounds from the Roman
senator's lute. How her possession of an instrument, and her skill in
playing, were subsequently gained, the reader already knows from
Vetranio's narrative at Ravenna. Could the frivolous senator have
discovered the real intensity of the emotions his art was raising in his
pupil's bosom while he taught her; could he have imagined how
incessantly, during their lessons, her sense of duty struggled with her
love for music--how completely she was absorbed, one moment by an agony
of doubt and fear, another by an ecstasy of enjoyment and hope--he would
have felt little of that astonishment at her coldness towards himself
which he so warmly expressed at his interview with Julia in the gardens
of the Court. In truth, nothing could be more complete than Antonina's
childish unconsciousness of the feelings with which Vetranio regarded
her. In entering his presence, whatever remnant of her affections
remained unwithered by her fears was solely attracted and engrossed by
the beloved and beautiful lute. In receiving the instrument, she almost
forgot the giver in the triumph of possession; or, if she thought of him
at all, it was to be grateful for having escaped uninjured from a member
of that class, for whom her father's reiterated admonitions had inspired
her with a vague feeling of dread and distrust, and to determine that,
now she had acknowledged his kindness and departed from his domains,
nothing should ever induce her to risk discovery by her father and peril
to herself by ever entering them again.
Innocent in her isolation, almost infantine in her natural simplicity, a
single enjoyment was sufficient to satisfy all the passions of her age.
Father, mother, lover, and companion; liberties, amusements, and
adornments--they were all summed up for her in that simple lute. The
archness, the liveliness, and the gentleness of her disposition; the
poetry of her nature, and the affection of her heart; the happy bloom of
youth, which seclusion could not all wither nor distorted precept taint,
were now entirely nourished, expanded, and freshened--such is the
creative power of human emotion--by that inestimable possession. She
could speak to it, smile on it, caress it, and believe, in the ecstasy
of her delight, in the carelessness of her self-delusion, that it
sympathised with her joy. During her long solitudes, when she was
silently watched in her father's absence by the brooding, melancholy
stranger whom he had set over her, it became a companion dearer than the
flower-garden, dearer even that the plains and mountains which formed
her favourite view. When her father returned, and she was led forth to
sit in a dark place among strange, silent people, and to listen to
interminable declamations, it was a solace to think of the instrument as
it lay hidden securely in her chamber, and to ponder delightedly on what
new music of her own she could play upon it next. And then, when
evening arrived, and she was left alone in her garden--then came the
hour of moonlight and song; the moment of rapture and melody that drew
her out of herself, elevated her she felt not how, and transported her
she knew not whither.
But, while we thus linger over reflection on motives and examinations
into character, we are called back to the outer world of passing
interests and events by the appearances of another figure on the scene.
We left Antonina in the garden thinking over her lute. She still
remains in her meditative position, but she is now no longer alone.
From the same steps by which she had descended, a man now advances into
the garden, and walks towards the place she occupies. His gait is
limping, his stature crooked, his proportions distorted. His large,
angular features stand out in gaunt contrast to his shrivelled cheeks.
His dry, matted hair has been burnt by the sun into a strange tawny
brown. His expression is one of fixed, stern, mournful thought. As he
steps stealthily along, advancing towards Antonina, he mutters to
himself, and clutches mechanically at his garments with his lank,
shapeless fingers. The radiant moonlight, falling fully upon his
countenance, invests it with a livid, mysterious, spectral appearance:
seen by a stranger at the present moment, he would have been almost
awful to look upon.
This was the man who had intercepted Vetranio on his journey home, and
who had now hurried back so as to regain his accustomed post before his
master's return, for he was the same individual mentioned by Numerian as
his aged convert, Ulpius, in his interview with the landholder at the
Basilica of St. Peter.
When Ulpius had arrived within a few paces of the girl he stopped,
saying in a hoarse, thick voice--
'Hide your toy--Numerian is at the gates!'
Antonina started violently as she listened to those repulsive accents.
The blood rushed into her cheeks; she hastily covered the lute with her
robe; paused an instant, as if intending to speak to the man, then
shuddered violently, and hurried towards the house.
As she mounted the steps Numerian met her in the hall. There was now no
chance of hiding the lute in its accustomed place.
'You stay too late in the garden,' said the father, looking proudly, in
spite of all his austerity, upon his beautiful daughter as she stood by
his side. 'But what affects you?' he added, noticing her confusion.
'You tremble; your colour comes and goes; your lips quiver. Give me
your hand!'
As Antonina obeyed him, a fold of the treacherous robe slipped aside,
and discovered a part of the frame of the lute. Numerian's quick eye
discovered it immediately. He snatched the instrument from her feeble
grasp. His astonishment on beholding it was too great for words, and
for an instant he confronted the poor girl, whose pale face looked rigid
with terror, in ominous and expressive silence.
'This thing,' said he at length, 'this invention of libertines in my
house--in my daughter's possession!' and he dashed the lute into
fragments on the floor.
For one moment Antonina looked incredulously on the ruins of the beloved
companion, which was the centre of all her happiest expectations for
future days. Then, as she began to estimate the reality of her
deprivation, her eyes lost all their heaven-born brightness, and filled
to overflowing with the tears of earth.
'To your chamber!' thundered Numerian, as she knelt, sobbing
convulsively, over those hapless fragments. 'To your chamber! Tomorrow
shall bring this mystery of iniquity to light!'
She rose humbly to obey him, for indignation had no part in the emotions
that shook her gentle and affectionate nature. As she moved towards the
room that no lute was henceforth to occupy, as she thought on the morrow
that no lute was henceforth to enliven, her grief almost overpowered
her. She turned back and looked imploringly at her father, as if
entreating permission to pick up even the smallest of the fragments at
his feet.
'To your chamber!' he reiterated sternly. 'Am I to be disobeyed to my
face?'
Without any repetition of her silent remonstrance, she instantly
retired. As soon as she was out of sight, Ulpius ascended the steps and
stood before the angered father.
'Look, Ulpius,' cried Numerian, 'my daughter, whom I have so carefully
cherished, whom I intended for an example to the world, has deceived me,
even thus!'
He pointed, as he spoke, to the ruins of the unfortunate lute; but
Ulpius did not address to him a word in reply, and he hastily
continued:--
'I will not sully the solemn offices of tonight by interrupting them
with my worldly affairs. To-morrow I will interrogate my disobedient
child. In the meantime, do not imagine, Ulpius, that I connect you in
any way with this wicked and unworthy deception! In you I have every
confidence, in your faithfulness I have every hope.'
Again he paused, and again Ulpius kept silence. Any one less agitated,
less confiding, than his unsuspicious master, would have remarked that a
faint sinister smile was breaking forth upon his haggard countenance.
But Numerian's indignation was still too violent to permit him to
observed, and, spite of his efforts to control himself, he again broke
forth in complaint.
'On this night too, of all others,' cried he, 'when I had hoped to lead
her among my little assembly of the faithful, to join in their prayers,
and to listen to my exhortations--on this night I am doomed to find her
a player on a pagan lute, a possessor of the most wanton of the world's
vanities! God give me patience to worship this night with unwandering
thoughts, for my heart is vexed at the transgression of my child, as the
heart of Eli of old at the iniquities of his sons!'
He was moving rapidly away, when, as if struck with a sudden
recollection, he stopped abruptly, and again addressed his gloomy
companion.
'I will go by myself to the chapel to-night,' said he. 'You, Ulpius,
will stay to keep watch over my disobedient child. Be vigilant, good
friend, over my house; for even now, on my return, I thought that two
strangers were following my steps, and I forebode some evil in store for
me as the chastisement for my sins, even greater than this misery of my
daughter's transgression. Be watchful, good Ulpius--be watchful!'
And, as he hurried away, the stern, serious man felt as overwhelmed at
the outrage that had been offered to his gloomy fanaticism, as the weak,
timid girl at the destruction that had been wreaked upon her harmless
lute.
After Numerian had departed, the sinister smile again appeared on the
countenance of Ulpius. He stood for a short time fixed in thought, and
then began slowly to descend a staircase near him which led to some
subterranean apartments. He had not gone far when a slight noise became
audible at an extremity of the corridor above. As he listened for a
repetition of the sound, he heard a sob, and looking cautiously up,
discovered, by the moonlight, Antonina stepping cautiously along the
marble pavement of the hall.
She held in her hand a little lamp; her small, rosy feet were uncovered;
the tears still streamed over her cheeks. She advanced with the
greatest caution (as if fearful of being overheard) until she gained the
part of the floor still strewn with the ruins of the broken lute. Here
she knelt down, and pressed each fragment that lay before her separately
to her lips. Then hurriedly concealing a single piece in her bosom, she
arose and stole quickly away in the direction by which she had come.
'Be patient till the dawn,' muttered her faithless guardian, gazing
after her from his concealment as she disappeared; 'it will bring to thy
lute a restorer, and to Ulpius an ally!'
CHAPTER 6. AN APPRENTICESHIP TO THE TEMPLE.
The action of our characters during the night included in the last two
chapters has now come to a pause. Vetranio is awaiting his guests for
the banquet; Numerian is in the chapel, preparing for the discourse that
he is to deliver to his friends; Ulpius is meditating in his master's
house; Antonina is stretched upon her couch, caressing the precious
fragment that she had saved from the ruins of her lute. All the
immediate agents of our story are, for the present, in repose.
It is our purpose to take advantage of this interval of inaction, and
direct the reader's attention to a different country from that selected
as the scene of our romance, and to such historical events of past years
as connect themselves remarkably with the early life of Numerian's
perfidious convert. This man will be found a person of great importance
in the future conduct of our story. It is necessary to the
comprehension of his character, and the penetration of such of his
purposes as have been already hinted at, and may subsequently appear,
that the long course of his existence should be traced upwards to its
source.
It was in the reign of Julian, when the gods of the Pagan achieved their
last victory over the Gospel of the Christian, that a decently attired
man, leading by the hand a handsome boy of fifteen years of age, entered
the gates of Alexandria, and proceeded hastily towards the high priest's
dwelling in the Temple of Serapis.
After a stay of some hours at his destination, the man left the city
alone as hastily as he entered it, and was never after seen at
Alexandria. The boy remained in the abode of the high priest until the
next day, when he was solemnly devoted to the service of the temple.
The boy was the young Emilius, afterwards called Ulpius. He was nephew
to the high priest, to whom he had been confided by his father, a
merchant of Rome.
Ambition was the ruling passion of the father of Emilius. It had
prompted him to aspire to every distinction granted to the successful by
the state, but it had not gifted him with the powers requisite to turn
his aspirations in any instance into acquisitions. He passed through
existence a disappointed man, planning but never performing, seeing his
more fortunate brother rising to the highest distinction in the
priesthood, and finding himself irretrievably condemned to exist in the
affluent obscurity ensured to him by his mercantile pursuits.
When his brother Macrinus, on Julian's accession to the imperial throne,
arrived at the pinnacle of power and celebrity as high priest of the
Temple of Serapis, the unsuccessful merchant lost all hope of rivalling
his relative in the pursuit of distinction. His insatiable ambition,
discarded from himself, now settled on one of his infant sons. He
determined that his child should be successful where he had failed. Now
that his brother had secured the highest elevation in the temple, no
calling could offer more direct advantages to a member of his household
that the priesthood. His family had been from their earliest origin
rigid Pagans. One of them had already attained to the most
distinguished honours of his gorgeous worship. He determined that
another should rival his kinsman, and that that other should be his
eldest son.
Firm in this resolution, he at once devoted his child to the great
design which he now held continually in view. He knew well that
Paganism, revived though it was, was not the universal worship that it
had been; that it was now secretly resisted, and might soon be openly
opposed, by the persecuted Christians throughout the Empire; and that if
the young generation were to guard it successfully from all future
encroachments, and to rise securely to its highest honours, more must be
exacted from them than the easy attachment to the ancient religion
require from the votaries of former days. Then, the performance of the
most important offices in the priesthood was compatible with the
possession of military or political rank. Now, it was to the temple,
and to the temple only, that the future servant of the gods should be
devoted. Resolving thus, the father took care that all the son's
occupations and rewards should, from his earliest years, be in some way
connected with the career for which he was intended. His childish
pleasures were to be conducted to sacrifices and auguries; his childish
playthings and prizes were images of the deities. No opposition was
offered on the boy's part to this plan of education. Far different from
his younger brother, whose turbulent disposition defied all authority,
he was naturally docile; and his imagination, vivid beyond his years,
was easily led captive by any remarkable object presented to it. With
such encouragement, his father became thoroughly engrossed by the
occupation of forming him for his future existence. His mother's
influence over him was jealously watched; the secret expression of her
love, of her sorrow, at the prospect of parting with him, was ruthlessly
suppressed whenever it was discovered; and his younger brother was
neglected, almost forgotten, in order that the parental watchfulness
might be entirely and invariably devoted to the eldest son.
When Emilius had numbered fifteen years, his father saw with delight
that the time had come when he could witness the commencement of the
realisation of all his projects. The boy was removed from home, taken
to Alexandria, and gladly left, by his proud and triumphant father,
under the especial guardianship of Macrinus, the high priest.
The chief of the temple full sympathised in his brother's designs for
the young Emilius. As soon as the boy had entered on his new
occupations, he was told that he must forget all that he had left behind
him at Rome; that he must look upon the high priest as his father, and
upon the temple, henceforth, as his home; and that the sole object of
his present labours and future ambition must be to rise in the service
of the gods. Nor did Macrinus stop here. So thoroughly anxious was he
to stand to his pupil in the place of a parent, and to secure his
allegiance by withdrawing him in every way from the world in which he
had hitherto lived, that he even changed his name, giving to him one of
his own appellations, and describing it as a privilege to stimulate him
to future exertions. From the boy Emilius, he was now permanently
transformed to the student Ulpius.
With such a natural disposition as we have already described, and under
such guardianship as that of the high priest, there was little danger
that Ulpius would disappoint the unusual expectations which had been
formed of him. His attention to his new duties never relaxed; his
obedience to his new masters never wavered. Whatever Macrinus demanded
of him he was sure to perform. Whatever longings he might feel to
return to home, he never discovered them; he never sought to gratify the
tastes naturally peculiar to his age. The high priest and his
colleagues were astonished at the extraordinary readiness with which the
boy himself forwarded their intentions for him. Had they known how
elaborately he had been prepared for his future employments at his
father's house, they would have been less astonished at their pupil's
unusual docility. Trained as he had been, he must have shown a more
than human perversity had he displayed any opposition to his uncle's
wishes. He had been permitted no childhood either of thought or action.
His natural precocity had been seized as the engine to force his
faculties into a perilous and unwholesome maturity; and when his new
duties demanded his attention, he entered on them with the same
sincerity of enthusiasm which his boyish coevals would have exhibited
towards a new sport. His gradual initiation into the mysteries of his
religion created a strange, voluptuous sensation of fear and interest in
his mind. He heard the oracles, and he trembled; he attended the
sacrifices and the auguries, and he wondered. All the poetry of the
bold and beautiful superstition to which he was devoted flowed
overwhelmingly into his young heart, absorbing the service of his fresh
imagination, and transporting him incessantly from the vital realities
of the outer world to the shadowy regions of aspiration and thought.
But his duties did not entirely occupy the attention of Ulpius. The boy
had his peculiar pleasures as well as his peculiar occupations. When
his employments were over for the day, it was a strange, unearthly,
vital enjoyment to him to wander softly in the shade of the temple
porticoes, looking down from his great mysterious eminence upon the
populous and sun-brightened city at his feet; watching the brilliant
expanse of the waters of the Nile glittering joyfully in the dazzling
and pervading light; raising his eyes from the fields and woods, the
palaces and garden, that stretched out before him below, to the lovely
and cloudless sky that watched round him afar and above, and that awoke
all that his new duties had left of the joyfulness, the affectionate
sensibility, which his rare intervals of uninterrupted intercourse with
his mother had implanted in his heart. Then, when the daylight began to
wane, and the moon and stars already grew beautiful in their places in
the firmament, he would pass into the subterranean vaults of the
edifice, trembling as his little taper scarcely dispelled the dull,
solemn gloom, and listening with breathless attention for the voices of
those guardian spirits whose fabled habitation was made in the
apartments of the sacred place. Or, when the multitude had departed for
their amusements and their homes, he would steal into the lofty halls
and wander round the pedestals of the mighty statues, breathing
fearfully the still atmosphere of the temple, and watching the passage
of the cold, melancholy moonbeams through the openings in the roof, and
over the colossal limbs and features of the images of the pagan gods.
Sometimes, when the services of Serapis and the cares attendant on his
communications with the Emperor were concluded, Macrinus would lead his
pupil into the garden of the priests, and praise him for his docility
till his heart throbbed with gratitude and pride. Sometimes he would
convey him cautiously outside the precincts of the sacred place, and
show him, in the suburbs of the city, silent, pale, melancholy men,
gliding suspiciously through the gay, crowded streets. Those fugitive
figures, he would declare, were the enemies of the temple and all that
it contained; conspirators against the Emperor and the gods; wretches
who were to be driven forth as outcasts from humanity; whose appellation
was 'Christian'; and whose impious worship, if tolerated, would deprive
him of the uncle whom he loved, of the temple that he reverenced, and of
the priestly dignity and renown which it should be his life's ambition
to acquire.
Thus tutored in his duties by his guardian, and in his recreations by
himself, as time wore on, the boy gradually lost every remaining
characteristic of his age. Even the remembrance of his mother and his
mother's love grew faint on his memory. Serious, solitary, thoughtful,
he lived but to succeed in the temple; he laboured but to emulate the
high priest. All his feelings and faculties were now enslaved by an
ambition, at once unnatural at his present age, and ominous of
affliction for his future life. The design that Macrinus had
contemplated as the work of years was perfected in a few months. The
hope that his father had scarce dared to entertain for his manhood was
already accomplished in his youth.
In these preparations for future success passed three years of the life
of Ulpius. At the expiration of that period the death of Julian
darkened the brilliant prospects of the Pagan world. Scarcely had the
priests of Serapis recovered the first shock of astonishment and grief
consequent upon the fatal news of the vacancy in the imperial throne,
when the edict of toleration issued by Jovian, the new Emperor, reached
the city of Alexandria, and was elevated on the walls of the temple.
The first sight of this proclamation (permitting freedom of worship to
the Christians) aroused in the highly wrought disposition of Ulpius the
most violent emotions of anger and contempt. The enthusiasm of his
character and age, guided invariably in the one direction of his
worship, took the character of the wildest fanaticism when he discovered
the Emperor's careless infringement of the supremacy of the temple. He
volunteered in the first moments of his fury to tear down the edict from
the walls, to lead an attack on the meetings of the triumphant
Christians, or to travel to the imperial abode and exhort Jovian to
withdraw his act of perilous leniency ere it was too late. With
difficulty did his more cautious confederates restrain him from the
execution of his impetuous designs. For two days he withdrew himself
from his companions, and brooded in solitude over the injury offered to
his beloved superstition, and the prospective augmentation of the
influence of the Christian sect.
But the despair of the young enthusiast was destined to be further
augmented by a private calamity, at once mysterious in its cause and
overwhelming in its effect. Two days after the publication of the edict
the high priest Macrinus, in the prime of vigour and manhood, suddenly
died.
To narrate the confusion and horror within and without the temple on the
discovery of this fatal even; to describe the execrations and tumults of
the priests and the populace, who at once suspected the favoured and
ambitious Christians of causing, by poison, the death of their spiritual
ruler, might be interesting as a history of the manners of the times,
but is immaterial to the object of this chapter. We prefer rather to
trace the effect on the mind of Ulpius of his personal and private
bereavement; of this loss--irretrievable to him--of the master whom he
loved and the guardian whom it was his privilege to revere.
An illness of some months, during the latter part of which his
attendants trembled for his life and reason, sufficiently attested the
sincerity of the grief of Ulpius for the loss of his protector. During
his paroxysms of delirium the priests who watched round his bed drew
from his ravings many wise conclusions as to the effects that his
seizure and its causes were likely to produce on his future character;
but, in spite of all their penetration, they were still far from
appreciating to a tithe of its extent the revolution that his
bereavement had wrought in his disposition. The boy himself, until the
moment of the high priest's death, had never been aware of the depth of
his devotion to his second father. Warped as they had been by his
natural parent, the affectionate qualities that were the mainspring of
his nature had never been entirely destroyed; and they seized on every
kind word and gentle action of Macrinus as food which had been grudged
them since their birth. Morally and intellectually, Macrinus had been
to him the beacon that pointed the direction of his course, the judge
that regulated his conduct, the Muse that he looked to for inspiration.
And now, when this link which had connected every ramification of his
most cherished and governing ideas was suddenly snapped asunder, a
desolation sunk down upon his mind which at once paralysed its
elasticity and withered its freshness. He glanced back, and saw nothing
but a home from whose pleasures and affections his father's ambition had
exiled him for ever. He looked forward, and as he thought of his
unfitness, both from character and education, to mix in the world as
others mixed in it, he saw no guiding star of social happiness for the
conduct of his existence to come. There was now no resource left for
him but entirely to deliver himself up to those pursuits which had made
his home as a strange place to him, which were hallowed by their
connection with the lost object of his attachment, and which would
confer the sole happiness and distinction that he could hope for in the
wide world on his future life.
In addition to this motive for labour in his vocation, there existed in
the mind of Ulpius a deep and settled feeling that animated him with
unceasing ardour for the prosecution of his cherished occupations. This
governing principle was detestation of the Christian sect. The
suspicion that others had entertained regarding the death of the high
priest was to his mind a certainty. He rejected every idea which
opposed his determined persuasion that the jealousy of the Christians
had prompted them to the murder, by poison, of the most powerful and
zealous of the Pagan priests. To labour incessantly until he attained
the influence and position formerly enjoyed by his relative, and to use
that influence and position, when once acquired, as the means of
avenging Macrinus, by sweeping every vestige of the Christian faith from
the face of the earth, were now the settled purposes of his heart.
Inspired by his determination with the deliberate wisdom which is in
most men the result only of the experience of years, he employed the
first days of his convalescence in cautiously maturing his future plans,
and impartially calculating his chances of success. This self-
examination completed, he devoted himself at once and for ever to his
life's great design. Nothing wearied, nothing discouraged, nothing
impeded him. Outward events passed by him unnoticed; the city's
afflictions and the city's triumphs spoke no longer to his heart. Year
succeeded to year, but Time had no tongue for him. Paganism gradually
sank, and Christianity imperceptibly rose, but change spread no picture
before his eyes. The whole outward world was a void to him, until the
moment arrived that beheld him successful in his designs. His
preparations for the future absorbed every faculty of his nature, and
left him, as to the present, a mere automaton, reflecting no principle,
and animated by no event--a machine that moved, but did not perceive--a
body that acted, without a mind that thought.
Returning for a moment to the outward world, we find that on the death
of Jovian, in 364, Valentinian, the new Emperor, continued the system of
toleration adopted by his predecessor. On his death, in 375, Gratian,
the successor to the imperial throne, so far improved on the example of
the two former potentates as to range himself boldly on the side of the
partisans of the new faith. Not content with merely encouraging, both
by precept and by example, the growth of Christianity, the Emperor
further testified to his zeal for the rising religion by inflicting
incessant persecutions upon the rapidly decreasing advocates of the
ancient worship; serving, by these acts of his reign, as pioneer to his
successor, Theodosius the Great, in the religious revolution which that
illustrious opponent of Paganism was destined to effect.
The death of Gratian, in 383, saw Ulpius enrolled among the chief
priests of the temple, and pointed out as the next inheritor of the
important office once held by the powerful and active Macrinus.
Beholding himself thus secure of the distinction for which he had
laboured, the aspiring priest found leisure, at length, to look forth
upon the affairs of the passing day. From every side desolation
darkened the prospect that he beheld. Already, throughout many
provinces of the Empire, the temples of the gods had been overthrown by
the destructive zeal of the triumphant Christians. Already hosts of the
terrified people, fearing that the fate of their idols might ultimately
be their own, finding themselves deserted by their disbanded priests,
and surrounded by the implacable enemies of the ancient faith, had
renounced their worship for the sake of saving their lives and securing
their property. On the wide field of Pagan ruin there now rose but one
structure entirely unimpaired. The Temple of Serapis still reared its
head--unshaken, unbending, unpolluted. Here the sacrifice still
prospered and the people still bowed in worship. Before this monument of
the religious glories of ages, even the rising power of Christian
supremacy quailed in dismay. Though the ranks of its once multitudinous
congregations were now perceptibly thinned, though the new churches
swarmed with converts, though the edicts from Rome denounced it as a
blot on the face of the earth, its gloomy and solitary grandeur was
still preserved. No unhallowed foot trod its secret recesses; no
destroying hand was raised as yet against its ancient and glorious
walls.
Indignation, but not despondency, filled the heart of Ulpius as he
surveyed the situation of the Pagan world. A determination nourished as
his had been by the reflections of years, and matured by incessant
industry of deliberation, is above all those shocks which affect a hasty
decision or destroy a wavering intention. Impervious to failure,
disasters urge it into action, but never depress it to repose. Its
existence is the air that preserves the vitality of the mind--the spring
that moves the action of the thoughts. Never for a moment did Ulpius
waver in his devotion to his great design, or despair of its ultimate
execution and success. Though every succeeding day brought the news of
fresh misfortunes for the Pagans and fresh triumphs for the Christians,
still, with a few of his more zealous comrades, he persisted in
expecting the advent of another Julian, and a day of restoration for the
dismantled shrines of the deities that he served. While the Temple of
Serapis stood uninjured, to give encouragement to his labours and refuge
to his persecuted brethren, there existed for him such an earnest of
success as would spur him to any exertion, and nerve him against any
peril.
And now, to the astonishment of priests and congregations, the silent,
thoughtful, solitary Ulpius suddenly started from his long repose, and
stood forth the fiery advocate of the rights of his invaded worship. In
a few days the fame of his addresses to the Pagans who still attended
the rites of Serapis spread throughout the whole city. The boldest
among the Christians, as they passed the temple walls, involuntarily
trembled when they heard the vehemence of the applause which arose from
the audience of the inspired priest. Addressed to all varieties of age
and character, these harangues woke an echo in every breast they
reached. To the young they were clothed in all the poetry of the
worship for which they pleaded. They dwelt on the altars of Venus that
the Christians would lay waste; on the woodlands that the Christians
would disenchant of their Dryads; on the hallowed Arts that the
Christians would arise and destroy. To the aged they called up
remembrances of the glories of the past achieved through the favour of
the gods; of ancestors who had died in their service; of old forgotten
loves, and joys, and successes that had grown and prospered under the
gentle guardianship of the deities of old--while the unvarying burden of
their conclusion to all was the reiterated assertion that the
illustrious Macrinus had died a victim to the toleration of the
Christian sect.
But the efforts of Ulpius were not confined to the delivery of orations.
Every moment of his leisure time was dedicated to secret pilgrimages
into Alexandria. Careless of peril, regardless of threats, the
undaunted enthusiast penetrated into the most private meeting-places of
the Christians; reclaiming on every side apostates to the Pagan creed,
and defying the hostility of half the city from the stronghold of the
temple walls. Day after day fresh recruits arrived to swell the ranks
of the worshippers of Serapis. The few members of the scattered
congregations of the provinces who still remained faithful to the
ancient worship were gathered together in Alexandria by the private
messengers of the unwearied Ulpius. Already tumults began to take place
between the Pagans and the Christians; and even now the priest of
Serapis prepared to address a protest to the new Emperor in behalf of
the ancient religion of the land. At this moment it seemed probable
that the heroic attempts of one man to prop the structure of
superstition, whose foundations were undermined throughout, and whose
walls were attacked by brigands, might actually be crowned with success.
But Time rolled on; and with him came inexorable change, trampling over
the little barriers set up against it by human opposition, and erecting
its strange and transitory fabrics triumphantly in their stead. In vain
did the devoted priest exert all his powers to augment and combine his
scattered band; in vain did the mighty temple display its ancient
majesty, its gorgeous sacrifices, its mysterious auguries. The spirit
of Christianity was forth for triumph on the earth--the last destinies
of Paganism were fast accomplishing. Yet a few seasons more of
unavailing resistance passed by, and then the Archbishop of Alexandria
issued his decree that the Temple of Serapis should be destroyed.
At the rumour of their Primate's determination, the Christian fanatics
rose by swarms from every corner of Egypt, and hurried into Alexandria
to be present at the work of demolition. From the arid solitudes of the
desert, from their convents on rocks and their caverns in the earth,
hosts of rejoicing monks flew to the city gates, and ranged themselves
with the soldiery and the citizens, impatient for the assault. At the
dawn of morning this assembly of destroyers was convened, and as the sun
rose over Alexandria they arrived before the temple walls.
The gates of the glorious structure were barred; the walls were crowded
with their Pagan defenders. A still, dead, mysterious silence reigned
over the whole edifice; and, of all the men who thronged it, one only
moved from his appointed place--one only wandered incessantly from point
to point, wherever the building was open to assault. Those among the
besiegers who were nearest the temple saw in this presiding genius of
the preparations for defence the object at once of their most malignant
hatred and their most ungovernable dread--Ulpius the priest.
As soon as the Archbishop gave the signal for the assault, a band of
monks--their harsh, discordant voices screaming fragments of psalms,
their tattered garments waving in the air, their cadaverous faces
gleaming with ferocious joy--led the way, placed the first ladders
against the walls, and began the attack. From all sides the temple was
assailed by the infuriated besiegers, and on all sides it was
successfully defended by the resolute besieged. Shock after shock fell
upon the massive gates without forcing them to recede; missile after
missile was hurled at the building, but no breach was made in its solid
surface. Multitudes scaled the walls, gained the outer porticoes, and
slaughtered their Pagan defenders, but were incessantly repulsed in
their turn ere they could make their advantage good. Over and over
again did the assailants seem on the point of storming the temple
successfully, but the figure of Ulpius, invariably appearing at the
critical moment among his disheartened followers, acted like a fatality
in destroying the effect of the most daring exertions and the most
important triumphs. Wherever there was danger, wherever there was
carnage, wherever there was despair, thither strode the undaunted
priest, inspiring the bold, succouring the wounded, reanimating the
feeble. Blinded by no stratagem, wearied by no fatigue, there was
something almost demoniac in his activity for destruction, in his
determination under defeat. The besiegers marked his course round the
temple by the calamities that befell them at his every step. If the
bodies of slaughtered Christians were flung down upon them from the
walls, they felt that Ulpius was there. If the bravest of the soldiery
hesitated at mounting the ladders, it was known that Ulpius was
directing the defeat of their comrades above. If a sally from the
temple drove back the advanced guard upon the reserves in the rear, it
was pleaded as their excuse that Ulpius was fighting at the head of his
Pagan bands. Crowd on crowd of Christian warriors still pressed forward
to the attack; but though the ranks of the unbelievers were perceptibly
thinned, though the gates that defended them at last began to quiver
before the reiterated blows by which they were assailed, every court of
the sacred edifice yet remained in the possession of the besieged, and
was at the disposal of the unconquered captain who organised the
defence.
Depressed by the failure of his efforts, and horrified at the carnage
already perpetrated among his adherents, the Archbishop suddenly
commanded a cessation of hostilities, and proposed to the defenders of
the temple a short and favourable truce. After some delay, and
apparently at the expense of some discord among their ranks, the Pagans
sent to the Primate an assurance of their acceptance of his terms, which
were that both parties should abstain from any further struggle for the
ascendancy until an edict from Theodosius determining the ultimate fate
of the temple should be applied for and obtained.
The truce once agreed on, the wide space before the respited edifice was
gradually cleared of its occupants. Slowly and sadly the Archbishop and
his followers departed from the ancient walls whose summits they had
assaulted in vain; and when the sun went down, of the great multitude
congregated in the morning a few corpses were all that remained. Within
the sacred building, Death and Repose ruled with the night, where
morning had brightly glittered on Life and Action. The wounded, the
wearied, and the cold, all now lay hushed alike, fanned by the night
breezes that wandered through the lofty porticoes, or soothed by the
obscurity that reigned over the silent halls. Among the ranks of the
Pagan devotees but one man still toiled and thought. Round and round
the temple, restless as a wild beast that is threatened in his lair,
watchful as a lonely spirit in a city of strange tombs, wandered the
solitary and brooding Ulpius. For him there was no rest of body--no
tranquility of mind. On the events of the next few days hovered the
fearful chance that was soon, either for misery or happiness, to
influence irretrievably the years of his future life. Round and round
the mighty walls he watched with mechanical and useless anxiety. Every
stone in the building was eloquent to his lonely heart--beautiful to his
wild imagination. On those barren structures stretched for him the loved
and fertile home; there was the shrine for whose glory his intellect had
been enslaved, for whose honour his youth had been sacrificed! Round and
round the secret recesses and sacred courts he paced with hurried
footstep, cleansing with gentle and industrious hand the stains of blood
and the defilements of warfare from the statues at his side. Sad,
solitary, thoughtful, as in the first days of his apprenticeship to the
gods, he now roved in the same moonlit recesses where Macrinus had
taught him in his youth. As the menacing tumults of the day had aroused
his fierceness, so the stillness of the quiet night awakened his
gentleness. He had combated for the temple in the morning as a son for
a parent, and he now watched over it at night as a miser over his
treasure, as a lover over his mistress, as a mother over her child!
The days passed on; and at length the memorable morning arrived which
was to determine the fate of the last temple that Christian fanaticism
had spared to the admiration of the world. At an early hour of the
morning the diminished numbers of the Pagan zealots met their reinforced
and determined opponents--both sides being alike unarmed--in the great
square of Alexandria. The imperial prescript was then publicly read.
It began by assuring the Pagans that their priest's plea for protection
for the temple had received the same consideration which had been
bestowed on the petition against the gods presented by the Christian
Archbishop, and ended by proclaiming the commands of the Emperor that
Serapis and all other idols in Alexandria should immediately be
destroyed.
The shout of triumph which followed the conclusion of the imperial edict
still rose from the Christian ranks when the advanced guard of the
soldiers appointed to ensure the execution of the Emperor's designs
appeared in the square. For a few minutes the forsaken Pagans stood
rooted to the spot where they had assembled, gazing at the warlike
preparations around them in a stupor of bewilderment and despair. Then
as they recollected how diminished were their numbers, how arduous had
been their first defence against a few, and how impossible would be a
second defence against many--from the boldest to the feeblest, a panic
seized on them; and, regardless of Ulpius, regardless of honour,
regardless of the gods, they turned with one accord and fled from the
place.
With the flight of the Pagans the work of demolition began. Even women
and children hurried to join in the welcome task of indiscriminate
destruction. No defenders on this occasion barred the gates of the
temple to the Christian hosts. The sublime solitude of the tenantless
building was outraged and invaded in an instant. Statues were broken,
gold was carried off, doors were splintered into fragments; but here for
a while the progress of demolition was delayed. Those to whom the
labour of ruining the outward structure had been confided were less
successful than their neighbours who had pillaged its contents. The
ponderous stones of the pillars, the massive surfaces of the walls,
resisted the most vigorous of their puny efforts, and forced them to
remain contented with mutilating that which they could not destroy--with
tearing off roofs, defacing marbles, and demolishing capitals. The rest
of the buildings remained uninjured, and grander even now in the
wildness of ruin than ever it had been in the stateliness of perfection
and strength.
But the most important achievement still remained, the death-wound of
Paganism was yet to be struck--the idol Serapis, which had ruled the
hearts of millions, and was renowned in the remotest corners of the
Empire, was to be destroyed! A breathless silence pervaded the
Christian ranks as they filled the hall of the god. A superstitious
dread, to which they had hitherto thought themselves superior, overcame
their hearts, as a single soldier, bolder than his fellows, mounted by a
ladder to the head of the colossal statue, and struck at its cheek with
an axe. The blow had scarcely been dealt when a deep groan was heard
from the opposite wall of the apartment, succeeded by a noise of
retreating footsteps, and then all was silent again. For a few minutes
this incident stayed the feet of those who were about to join their
companion in the mutilation of the idol; but after an interval their
hesitation vanished, they dealt blow after blow at the statue, and no
more groans followed--no more sounds were heard, save the wild echoes of
the stroke of hammer, crowbar, and club, resounding through the lofty
hall. In an incredibly short space of time the image of Serapis lay in
great fragments on the marble floor. The multitude seized on the limbs
of the idol and ran forth to drag them in triumph through the streets.
Yet a few minutes more, and the ruins were untenanted, the temple was
silent--Paganism was destroyed!
Throughout the ravaging course of the Christians over the temple, they
had been followed with dogged perseverance, and at the same time with
the most perfect impunity, by the only Pagan of all his brethren who had
not sought safety by flight. This man, being acquainted with every
private passage and staircase in the sacred building, was enabled to be
secretly present at each fresh act of demolition, in whatever part of
the edifice it might be perpetrated. From hall to hall, and from room
to room, he tracked with noiseless step and glaring eye the movements of
the Christian mob--now hiding himself behind a pillar, now passing into
concealed cavities in the walls, now looking down from imperceptible
fissures in the roof; but, whatever his situation, invariably watching
from it, with the same industry of attention and the same silence of
emotion, the minutest acts of spoliation committed by the most humble
follower of the Christian ranks. It was only when he entered with the
victorious ravagers into the vast apartment occupied by the idol Serapis
that the man's countenance began to give evidence of the agony under
which his heart was writhing within him. He mounted a private staircase
cut in the hollow of the massive wall of the room, and gaining a passage
that ran round the extremities of the ceiling, looked through a sort of
lattice concealed in the ornaments of the cornice. As he gazed down and
saw the soldier mounting, axe in hand, to the idol's head, great drops
of perspiration trickled from his forehead. His hot, thick breath
hissed through his closed teeth, and his hands strained at the strong
metal supports of the lattice until they bent beneath his grasp. When
the stroke descended on the image, he closed his eyes. When the
fragment detached by the blow fell on the floor, a groan burst from his
quivering lips. For one moment more he glared down with a gaze of
horror upon the multitude at his feet, and then with frantic speed he
descended the steep stairs by which he had mounted to the roof, and fled
from the temple.
The same night this man was again seen by some shepherds whom curiosity
led to visit the desecrated building, weeping bitterly in its ruined and
deserted porticoes. As they approached to address him, he raised his
head, and with a supplicating action signed to them to leave the place.
For the few moments during which he confronted them, the moonlight shone
full upon his countenance, and the shepherds, who had in former days
attended the ceremonies of the temple, saw with astonishment that the
solitary mourner whose meditations they had disturbed was no other than
Ulpius the priest.
At the dawn of day these shepherds had again occasion to pass the walls
of the pillaged temple. Throughout the hours of the night the
remembrance of the scene of unsolaced, unpartaken grief that they had
beheld--of the awful loneliness of misery in which they had seen the
heart-broken and forsaken man, whose lightest words they had once
delighted to revere--inspired them with a feeling of pity for the
deserted Pagan, widely at variance with the spirit of persecution which
the spurious Christianity of their day would fain have instilled in the
bosoms of its humblest votaries. Bent on consolation, anxious to afford
help, these men, like the Samaritan of old, went up at their own peril
to succour a brother in affliction. They searched every portion of the
empty building, but the object of their sympathy was nowhere to be seen.
They called, but heard no answering sound, save the dirging of the winds
of early morning through the ruined halls, which but a short time since
had resounded with the eloquence of the once illustrious priest. Except
a few night-birds, already sheltered by the deserted edifice, not a
living being moved in what was once the temple of the Eastern world.
Ulpius was gone.
These events took place in the year 389. In 390, Pagan ceremonies were
made treason by the laws throughout the whole Roman Empire.
From that period the scattered few who still adhered to the ancient
faith became divided into three parties; each alike insignificant,
whether considered as openly or secretly inimical to the new religion of
the State at large.
The first party unsuccessfully endeavoured to elude the laws prohibitory
of sacrifices and divinations by concealing their religious ceremonies
under the form of convivial meetings.
The second preserved their ancient respect for the theory of Paganism,
but abandoned all hope and intention of ever again accomplishing its
practice. By such timely concessions many were enabled to preserve--and
some even to attain--high and lucrative employments as officers of the
State.
The third retired to their homes, the voluntary exiles of every
religion; resigning the practice of their old worship as a necessity,
and shunning the communion of Christians as a matter of choice.
Such were the unimportant divisions into which the last remnants of the
once powerful Pagan community now subsided; but to none of them was the
ruined and degraded Ulpius ever attached.
For five weary years--dating from the epoch of the prohibition of
Paganism--he wandered through the Empire, visiting in every country the
ruined shrines of his deserted worship--a friendless, hopeless, solitary
man!
Throughout the whole of Europe, and all of Asia and the East that still
belonged to Rome, he bent his slow and toilsome course. In the fertile
valleys of Gaul, over the burning sands of Africa, through the sun-
bright cities of Spain, he travelled--unfriended as a man under a curse,
lonely as a second Cain. Never for an instant did the remembrance of
his ruined projects desert his memory, or his mad determination to
revive his worship abandon his mind. At every relic of Paganism,
however slight, that he encountered on his way, he found a nourishment
for his fierce anguish, and employment for his vengeful thoughts.
Often, in the little villages, children were frightened from their
sports in a deserted temple by the apparition of his gaunt, rigid figure
among the tottering pillars, or the sound of his hollow voice as he
muttered to himself among the ruins of the Pagan tombs. Often, in
crowded cities, groups of men, congregated to talk over the fall of
Paganism, found him listening at their sides, and comforting them, when
they carelessly regretted their ancient faith, with a smiling and
whispered assurance that a time of restitution would yet come. By all
opinions and in all places he was regarded as a harmless madman, whose
strange delusions and predilections were not to be combated, but to be
indulged. Thus he wandered through the Christian world; regardless
alike of lapse of time and change of climate; living within himself;
mourning, as a luxury, over the fall of his worship; patient of wrongs,
insults, and disappointments; watching for the opportunity that he still
persisted in believing was yet to arrive; holding by his fatal
determination with all the recklessness of ambition and all the
perseverance of revenge.
The five years passed away unheeded, uncalculated, unregretted by
Ulpius. For him, living but in the past, hoping but for the future,
space held no obstacles--time was an oblivion. Years pass as days,
hours as moments, when the varying emotions which mark their existence
on the memory, and distinguish their succession on the dial of the
heart, exist no longer either for happiness or woe. Dead to all
freshness of feeling, the mind of Ulpius, during the whole term of his
wanderings, lay numbed beneath the one idea that possessed it. It was
only at the expiration of those unheeded years, when the chances of
travel turned his footsteps towards Alexandria, that his faculties burst
from the long bondage which had oppressed them. Then--when he passed
through those gates which he had entered in former years a proud,
ambitious boy, when he walked ungreeted through the ruined temple where
he had once lived illustrious and revered--his dull, cold thoughts arose
strong and vital within him. The spectacle of the scene of his former
glories, which might have awakened despair in others, aroused the
dormant passions, emancipated the stifled energies in him. The projects
of vengeance and the visions of restoration which he had brooded over
for five long years, now rose before him as realised already under the
vivid influence of the desecrated scenes around. As he stood beneath
the shattered porticoes of the sacred place, not a stone crumbling at
his feet but rebuked him for his past inaction, and strengthened him for
daring, for conspiracy, for revenge, in the service of the outrage gods.
The ruined temples he had visited in his gloomy pilgrimages now became
revived by his fancy, as one by one they rose on his toiling memory.
Broken pillars soared from the ground; desecrated idols reoccupied their
vacant pedestals; and he, the exile and the mourner, stood forth once
again the ruler, the teacher, and the priest. The time of restitution
was come; though his understanding supplied him with no distinct
projects, his heart urged him to rush blindly on the execution of his
reform. The moment had arrived--Macrinus should yet be avenged; the
temple should at last be restored.
He descended into the city; he hurried--neither welcomed nor
recognised--through the crowded streets; he entered the house of a man
who had once been his friend and colleague in the days that were past,
and poured forth to him his wild determinations and disjointed plans,
entreating his assistance, and promising him a glorious success. But
his old companion had become, by a timely conversion to Christianity, a
man of property and reputation in Alexandria, and he turned from the
friendless enthusiast with indignation and contempt. Repulsed, but not
disheartened, Ulpius sought others who he had known in his prosperity
and renown. They had all renounced their ancient worship--they all
received him with studied coldness or careless disdain; but he still
persisted in his useless efforts. He blinded his eyes to their
contemptuous looks; he shut his ears to their derisive words.
Persevering in his self-delusion, he appointed them messengers to their
brethren in other countries, captains of the conspiracy that was to
commence in Alexandria, orators before the people when the memorable
revolution had once begun. It was in vain that they refused all
participation in his designs; he left them as the expressions of refusal
rose to their lips, and hurried elsewhere, as industrious in his
efforts, as devoted to his unwelcome mission, as if half the population
of the city had vowed themselves joyfully to aid him in his frantic
attempt.
Thus during the whole day he continued his labour of useless persuasion
among those in the city who had once been his friends. When the evening
came, he repaired, weary but not despondent, to the earthly paradise
that he was determined to regain--to the temple where he had once
taught, and where he still imagined that he was again destined to
preside. Here he proceeded, ignorant of the new laws, careless of
discovery and danger, to ascertain by divination, as in the days of old,
whether failure or success awaited him ultimately in his great design.
Meanwhile the friends whose assistance Ulpius had determined to extort
were far from remaining inactive on their parts after the departure of
the aspiring priest. They remembered with terror that the laws affected
as severely those concealing their knowledge of a Pagan intrigue as
those actually engaged in directing a Pagan conspiracy; and their
anxiety for their personal safety overcoming every consideration of the
dues of honour or the claims of ancient friendship, they repaired in a
body to the Prefect of the city, and informed him, with all the
eagerness of apprehension, of the presence of Ulpius in Alexandria, and
of the culpability of the schemes that he had proposed.
A search after the devoted Pagan was immediately commenced. He was
found the same night before a ruined altar, brooding over the entrails
of an animal that he had just sacrificed. Further proof of his guilt
could not be required. He was taken prisoner; led forth the next
morning to be judged, amid the execrations of the very people who had
almost adored him once; and condemned the following day to suffer the
penalty of death.
At the appointed hour the populace assembled to behold the execution.
To their indignation and disappointment, however, when the officers of
the city appeared before the prison, it was only to inform the
spectators that the performance of the fatal ceremony had been
adjourned. After a mysterious delay of some weeks, they were again
convened, not to witness the execution, but the receive the
extraordinary announcement that the culprit's life had been spared, and
that his amended sentence now condemned him to labour as a slave for
life in the copper-mines of Spain.
What powerful influence induced the Prefect to risk the odium of
reprieving a prisoner whose guilt was so satisfactorily ascertained as
that of Ulpius never was disclosed. Some declared that the city
magistrate was still at heart a Pagan, and that he consequently shrunk
from authorising the death of a man who had once been the most
illustrious among the professors of the ancient creed. Others reported
that Ulpius had secured the leniency of his judges by acquainting them
with the position of one of those secret repositories of enormous
treasure supposed to exist beneath the foundations of the dismantled
Temple of Serapis. But the truth of either of these rumours could never
be satisfactorily proved. Nothing more was accurately discovered than
that Ulpius was removed from Alexandria to the place of earthly torment
set apart for him by the zealous authorities, at the dead of night; and
that the sentry at the gate through which he departed heard him mutter
to himself, as he was hurried onward, that his divinations had prepared
him for defeat, but that the great day of Pagan restoration would yet
arrive.
In the year 407, twelve years after the events above narrated, Ulpius
entered the city of Rome.
He had not advanced far, before the gaiety and confusion in the streets
appeared completely to bewilder him. He hastened to the nearest public
garden that he could perceive, and avoiding the frequented paths, flung
himself down, apparently fainting with exhaustion, at the foot of a
tree.
For some time he lay on the shady resting-place which he had chosen,
gasping painfully for breath, his frame ever and anon shaken to its
centre by sudden spasms, and his lips quivering with an agitation which
he vainly endeavoured to suppress. So changed was his aspect, that the
guards who had removed him from Alexandria, wretched as was his
appearance even then, would have found it impossible to recognise him
now as the same man whom they had formerly abandoned to slavery in the
mines of Spain. The effluvia exhaled from the copper ore in which he
had been buried for twelve years had not only withered the flesh upon
his bones, but had imparted to its surface a livid hue, almost death-
like in its dulness. His limbs, wasted by age and distorted by
suffering, bent and trembled beneath him; and his form, once so majestic
in its noble proportions, was now so crooked and misshapen, that whoever
beheld him could only have imagined that he must have been deformed from
his birth. Of the former man no characteristic remained but the
expression of the stern, mournful eyes; and these, the truthful
interpreters of the indomitable mind whose emotions they seemed created
to express, preserved, unaltered by suffering and unimpaired by time,
the same look, partly of reflection, partly of defiance, and partly of
despair, which had marked them in those past days when the temple was
destroyed and the congregations of the Pagans dispersed.
But the repose at this moment demanded by his worn-out body was even yet
denied to it by his untamed, unwearied mind, and, as the voice of his
old delusion spoke within him again, the devoted priest rose from his
solitary resting-place, and looked forth upon the great city, whose new
worship he was vowed to overthrow.
'By years of patient watchfulness,' he whispered to himself, 'have I
succeeded in escaping successfully from my dungeon among the mines. Yet
a little more cunning, a little more endurance, a little more vigilance,
and I shall still live to people, by my own exertions, the deserted
temples of Rome.'
As he spoke he emerged from the grove into the street. The joyous
sunlight--a stranger to him for years--shone warmly down upon his face,
as if to welcome him to liberty and the world. The sounds of gay
laughter rang in his ears, as if to woo him back to the blest enjoyments
and amenities of life; but Nature's influence and man's example were now
silent alike to his lonely heart. Over its dreary wastes still reigned
the ruthless ambition which had exiled love from his youth, and
friendship from his manhood, and which was destined to end its mission
of destruction by banishing tranquility from his age. Scowling fiercely
at all around and above him, he sought the loneliest and shadiest
streets. Solitude had now become a necessity to his heart. The 'great
gulph' of his unshared aspirations had long since socially separated him
for ever from his fellow-men. He thought, laboured, and suffered for
himself alone.
To describe the years of unrewarded labour and unalleviated hardship
endured by Ulpius in the place of his punishment; to dwell on the day
that brought with it--whatever the season in the world above--the same
unwearying inheritance of exertion and fatigue; to chronicle the history
of night after night of broken slumber one hour, of wearying thought the
next, would be to produce a picture from the mournful monotony of which
the attention of the reader would recoil with disgust. It will be here
sufficient to observe, that the influence of the same infatuation which
had nerved him to the defence of the assaulted temple, and encouraged
him to attempt his ill-planned restoration of Paganism, had preserved
him through sufferings under which stronger and younger men would have
sunk for ever; had prompted his determination to escape from his
slavery, and had now brought him to Rome--old, forsaken, and feeble as
he was--to risk new perils and suffer new afflictions for the cause to
which, body and soul, he had ruthlessly devoted himself for ever.
Urged, therefore, by his miserable delusion, he had now entered a city
where even his name was unknown, faithful to his frantic project of
opposing himself, as a helpless, solitary man, against the people and
government of an Empire. During his term of slavery, regardless of his
advanced years, he had arranged a series of projects, the gradual
execution of which would have demanded the advantages of a long and
vigorous life. He no more desired, as in his former attempt at
Alexandria, to precipitate at all hazards the success of his designs.
He was now prepared to watch, wait, plot, and contrive for years on
years; he was resigned to be contented with the poorest and slowest
advancement--to be encouraged by the smallest prospect of ultimate
triumph. Acting under this determination, he started his project by
devoting all that remained of his enfeebled energies to cautiously
informing himself, by every means in his power, of the private,
political, and religious sentiments of all men of influence in Rome.
Wherever there was a popular assemblage, he attended it to gather the
scandalous gossip of the day; wherever there was a chance of overhearing
a private conversation, he contrived to listen to it unobserved. About
the doors of taverns and the haunts of discharged servants he lurked
noiseless as a shadow, attentive alike to the careless revelations of
intoxication or the scurrility of malignant slaves. Day after day
passed on, and still saw him devoted to his occupation (which, servile
as it was in itself, was to his eyes ennobled by its lofty end), until
at the expiration of some months he found himself in possession of a
vague and inaccurate fund of information, which he stored up as a
priceless treasure in his mind. He next discovered the name and abode
of every nobleman in Rome suspected even of the most careless attachment
to the ancient form of worship. He attended Christian churches,
mastered the intricacies of different sects, and estimated the
importance of contending schisms; gaining this collection of
heterogeneous facts under the combined disadvantages of poverty,
solitude, and age; dependent for support on the poorest public
charities, and for shelter on the meanest public asylums. Every
conclusion that he drew from all he learned partook of the sanguine
character of the fatal self-deception which had embittered his whole
life. He believed that the dissensions which he saw raging in the
Church would speedily effect the destruction of Christianity itself;
that, when such a period should arrive, the public mind would require
but the guidance of some superior intellect to return to its old
religious predilections; and that to lay the foundation for effecting in
such a manner the desired revolution, it was necessary for him--
impossible though it might seem in his present degraded condition--to
gain access to the disaffected nobles of Rome, and discover the secret
of acquiring such an influence over them as would enable him to infect
them with his enthusiasm, and fire them with his determination. Greater
difficulties even than these had been overcome by other men. Solitary
individuals had, ere this, originated revolutions. The gods would
favour him; his own cunning would protect him. Yet a little more
patience, a little more determination, and he might still, after all his
misfortunes, be assured of success.
It was about this period that he first heard, while pursuing his
investigations, of an obscure man who had suddenly arisen to undertake a
reformation in the Christian Church, whose declared aim was to rescue
the new worship from that very degeneracy on the fatal progress of which
rested all his hopes of triumph. It was reported that this man had been
for some time devoted to his reforming labours, but that the
difficulties attendant on the task that he had appointed for himself had
hitherto prevented him from attaining all the notoriety essential to the
satisfactory prosecution of his plans. On hearing this rumour, Ulpius
immediately joined the few who attended the new orator's discourses, and
there heard enough to convince him that he listened to the most
determined zealot for Christianity in the city of Rome. To gain this
man's confidence, to frustrate every effort that he might make in his
new vocation, to ruin his credit with his hearers, and to threaten his
personal safety by betraying his inmost secrets to his powerful enemies
in the Church, were determinations instantly adopted by the Pagan as
duties demanded by the exigencies of his creed. From that moment he
seized every opportunity of favourably attracting the new reformer's
attention to himself, and, as the reader already knows, he was at length
rewarded for his cunning and perseverance by being received into the
household of the charitable and unsuspicious Numerian as a pious convert
to the Christianity of the early Church.
Once installed under Numerian's roof, the treacherous Pagan saw in the
Christian's daughter an instrument admirably adapted, in his
unscrupulous hands, for forwarding his wild project of obtaining the ear
of a Roman of power and station who was disaffected to the established
worship. Among the patricians of whose anti-Christian predilections
report had informed him, was Numerian's neighbour, Vetranio the senator.
To such a man, renowned for his life of luxury, a girl so beautiful as
Antonina would be a bribe rich enough to enable him to extort any
promise required as a reward for betraying her while under the
protection of her father's house. In addition to this advantage to be
drawn from her ruin, was the certainty that her loss would so affect
Numerian as to render him, for a time at least, incapable of pursuing
his labours in the cause of Christianity. Fixed then in his detestable
purpose, the ruthless priest patiently awaited the opportunity of
commencing his machinations. Nor did he watch in vain. The victim
innocently fell into the very trap that he had prepared for her when she
first listened to the music of Vetranio's lute, and permitted her
treacherous guardian to become the friend who concealed her disobedience
from her father's ear. After that first fatal step every day brought
the projects of Ulpius nearer to success. The long-sought interview
with the senator was at length obtained; the engagement imperatively
demanded on the one side was, as we have already related, carelessly
accepted on the other; the day that was to bring success to the schemes
of the betrayer, and degradation to the honour of the betrayed, was
appointed; and once more the cold heart of the fanatic warmed to the
touch of joy. No doubts upon the validity of his engagement with
Vetranio ever entered his mind. He never imagined that powerful senator
could with perfect impunity deny him the impracticable assistance he had
demanded as his reward, and thrust him as an ignorant madman from his
palace gates. Firmly and sincerely he believed that Vetranio was so
satisfied with his readiness in pandering to his profligate designs, and
so dazzled by the prospect of the glory which would attend success in
the great enterprise, that he would gladly hold to the performance of
his promise whenever it should be required of him. In the meantime the
work was begun. Numerian was already, through his agency, watched by
the spies of a jealous and unscrupulous Church. Feuds, schisms,
treacheries, and dissensions marched bravely onward through the
Christian ranks. All things combined to make it certain that the time
was near at hand when, through his exertions and the friendly senator's
help, the restoration of Paganism might be assured.
With the widest diversity of pursuit and difference of design, there was
still a strange and mysterious analogy between the temporary positions
of Ulpius and Numerian. One was prepared to be a martyr for the temple;
the other to be a martyr for the Church. Both were enthusiasts in an
unwelcome cause; both had suffered more than a life's wonted share of
affliction; and both were old, passing irretrievably from their fading
present on earth to the eternal future awaiting them in the unknown
spheres beyond.
But here--with their position--the comparison between them ends. The
Christian's principle of action, drawn from the Divinity he served, was
love; the Pagan's, born of the superstition that was destroying him, was
hate. The one laboured for mankind; the other for himself. And thus
the aspirations of Numerian, founded on the general good, nourished by
offices of kindness, and nobly directed to a generous end, might lead
him into indiscretion, but could never degrade him into crime--might
trouble the serenity of his life, but could never deprive him of the
consolation of hope. While, on the contrary, the ambition of Ulpius,
originating in revenge and directed to destruction, exacted cruelty from
his heart and duplicity from his mind; and, as the reward for his
service, mocked him alternately throughout his whole life with delusion
and despair.
CHAPTER 7. THE BED-CHAMBER.
It is now time to resume our chronicle of the eventful night which
marked the destruction of Antonina's lute and the conspiracy against
Antonina's honour.
The gates of Vetranio's palace were closed, and the noises in it were
all hushed; the banquet was over, the triumph of the Nightingale Sauce
had been achieved, and the daybreak was already glimmering in the
eastern sky, when the senator's favoured servant, the freedman Carrio,
drew back the shutter of the porter's lodge, where he had been dozing
since the conclusion of the feast, and looked out lazily into the
street. The dull, faint light of dawn was now strengthening slowly over
the lonely roadway and on the walls of the lofty houses. Of the groups
of idlers of the lowest class who had assembled during the evening in
the street to snuff the fragrant odours which steamed afar from
Vetranio's kitchens, not one remained; men, women, and children had long
since departed to seek shelter wherever they could find it, and to
fatten their lean bodies on what had been charitable bestowed on them of
the coarser relics of the banquet. The mysterious solitude and
tranquility of daybreak in a great city prevailed over all things.
Nothing impressed, however, by the peculiar and solemn attraction of the
scene at this moment, the freedman apostrophised the fresh morning air,
as it blew over him, in strong terms of disgust, and even ventured in
lowered tones to rail against his master's uncomfortable fancy for being
awakened after a feast at the approach of dawn. Far too well aware,
nevertheless, of the necessity of yielding the most implicit obedience
to the commands he had received to resign himself any longer to the
pleasant temptations of repose, Carrio, after yawning, rubbing his eyes,
and indulging for a few moments more in the luxury of complaint, set
forth in earnest to follow the corridors leading to the interior of the
palace, and to awaken Vetranio without further delay.
He had not advanced more than a few steps when a proclamation, written
in letters of gold on a blue-coloured board, and hung against the wall
at his side, attracted his attention. This public notice, which delayed
his progress at the very outset, and which was intended for the special
edification of all the inhabitants of Rome, was thus expressed:--
'ON THIS DAY, AND FOR TEN DAYS FOLLOWING, THE AFFAIRS OF OUR PATRON
OBLIGE HIM TO BE ABSENT FROM ROME.'
Here the proclamation ended, without descending to particulars. It had
been put forth, in accordance with the easy fashion of the age, to
answer at once all applications at Vetranio's palace during the
senator's absence. Although the colouring of the board, the writing of
the letters, and the composition of the sentence were the work of his
own ingenuity, the worthy Carrio could not prevail upon himself to pass
the proclamation without contemplating is magnificence anew. For some
time he stood regarding it with the same expression of lofty and
complacent approbation which we see in these modern days illuminating
the countenance of a connoisseur before one of his own old pictures
which he has bought as a great bargain, or dawning over the bland
features of a linen-draper as he surveys from the pavement his morning's
arrangement of the window of the shop. All things, however, have their
limits, even a man's approval of an effort of his own skill.
Accordingly, after a prolonged review of the proclamation, some faint
ideas of the necessity of immediately obeying his master's commands
revived in the mind of the judicious Carrio, and counselled him to turn
his steps at once in the direction of the palace sleeping apartments.
Greatly wondering what new caprice had induced the senator to
contemplate leaving Rome at the dawn of day--for Vetranio had divulged
to no one the object of his departure--the freedman cautiously entered
his master's bed-chamber. He drew aside the ample silken curtains
suspended around and over the sleeping couch, from the hands of Graces
and Cupids sculptured in marble; but the statues surrounded an empty
bed. Vetranio was not there. Carrio next entered the bathroom; the
perfumed water was steaming in its long marble basin, and the soft
wrapping-cloths lay ready for use; the attendant slave, with his
instruments of ablution, waited, half asleep, in his accustomed place;
but here also no signs of the master's presence appeared. Somewhat
perplexed, the freedman examined several other apartments. He found
guests, dancing girls, parasites, poets, painters--a motley crew--
occupying every kind of dormitory, and all peacefully engaged in
sleeping off the effects of the wine they had drunk at the banquet; but
the great object of his search still eluded him as before. At last it
occurred to him that the senator, in an excess of convivial enthusiasm
and jovial hospitality, might yet be detaining some favoured guest at
the table of the feast.
Pausing, therefore, at some carved doors which stood ajar at one
extremity of a spacious hall, he pushed them open, and hurriedly entered
the banqueting-room beyond.
A soft, dim, luxurious light reigned over this apartment, which now
presented, as far as the eye could discern, an aspect of confusion that
was at once graceful and picturesque. Of the various lamps, of every
variety of pattern, hanging from the ceiling, but few remained alight.
From those, however, which were still unextinguished there shone a mild
brightness, admirably adapted to display the objects immediately around
them. The golden garlands and the alabaster pots of sweet ointment
which had been suspended before the guests during the banquet, still
hung from the painted ceiling. On the massive table, composed partly of
ebony and partly of silver, yet lay, in the wildest confusion, fragments
of gastronomic delicacies, grotesque dinner services, vases of flowers,
musical instruments, and crystal dice; while towering over all rose the
glittering dish which had contained the nightingales consumed by the
feasters, with the four golden Cupids which had spouted over them that
illustrious invention--the Nightingale Sauce. Around the couches, of
violet and rose colour, ranged along the table, the perfumed and gaily-
tinted powders that had been strewn in patterns over the marble floor
were perceptible for a few yards; but beyond this point nothing more was
plainly distinguishable. The eye roved down the sides of the glorious
chamber, catching dim glimpses of gorgeous draperies, crowded statues,
and marble columns, but discerning nothing accurately, until it reached
the half-opened windows, and rested upon the fresh dewy verdure now
faintly visible in the shady gardens without. There--waving in the
morning breezes, charged on every leaf with their burden of pure and
welcome moisture--rose the lofty pine-trees, basking in the recurrence
of the new day's beautiful and undying youth, and rising in reproving
contrast before the exhausted allurements of luxury and the perverted
creations of art which burdened the tables of the hall within.
After a hasty survey of the apartment, the freedman appeared to be on
the point of quitting it in despair, when the noise of a falling dish,
followed by several partly suppressed and wholly confused exclamations
of affright, caught his ear. He once more approached the banqueting-
table, retrimmed a lamp that hung near him, and taking it in his hand,
passed to the side of the room whence the disturbance proceeded. A
hideous little negro, staring in ludicrous terror at a silver oven, half
filled with bread, which had just fallen beside him, was the first
object he discovered. A few paces beyond the negro reposed a beautiful
boy, crowned with vine leaves and ivy, still sleeping by the side of his
lyre; and farther yet, stretched in an uneasy slumber on a silken couch,
lay the identical object of the freedman's search--the illustrious
author of the Nightingale Sauce.
Immediately above the sleeping senator hung his portrait, in which he
was modestly represented as rising by the assistance of Minerva to the
top of Parnassus, the nine Muses standing round him rejoicing. At his
feet reposed a magnificent white cat, whose head rested in all the
luxurious laziness of satiety on the edge of a golden saucer half filled
with dormice stewed in milk. The most indubitable evidences of the
night's debauch appeared in Vetranio's disordered dress and flushed
countenance as the freedman regarded him. For some minutes the worthy
Carrio stood uncertain whether to awaken his master or not, deciding
finally, however, on obeying the commands he had received, and
disturbing the slumbers of the wearied voluptuary before him. To effect
this purpose, it was necessary to call in the aid of the singing-boy;
for, by a refinement of luxury, Vetranio had forbidden his attendants to
awaken him by any other method than the agency of musical sounds.
With some difficulty the boy was sufficiently aroused to comprehend the
service that was required of him. For a short time the notes of the
lyre sounded in vain. At last, when the melody took a louder and more
martial character, the sleeping patrician slowly opened his eyes and
stared vacantly around him.
'My respected patron,' said the polite Carrio in apologetic tones,
'commanded that I should awaken him with the dawn; the daybreak has
already appeared.'
When the freedman had ceased speaking, Vetranio sat up on the couch,
called for a basin of water, dipped his fingers in the refreshing
liquid, dried them abstractedly on the long silky curls of the singing-
boy who stood beside him, gazed about him once more, repeated
interrogatively the word 'daybreak', and sunk gently back upon his
couch. We are grieved to confess it--but the author of the Nightingale
Sauce was moderately inebriated.
A short pause followed, during which the freedman and the singing-boy
stared upon each other in mutual perplexity. At length the one resumed
his address of apology, and the other resumed his efforts on the lyre.
Once more, after an interval, the eyes of Vetranio lazily unclosed, and
this time he began to speak; but his thoughts--if thoughts they could be
called--were as yet wholly occupied by the 'table-talk' at the past
night's banquet.
'The ancient Egyptians--oh, sprightly and enchanting Camilla--were a
wise nation!' murmured the senator drowsily. 'I am myself descended
from the ancient Egyptians; and, therefore, I hold in high veneration
that cat in your lap, and all cats besides. Herodotus--an historian
whose works I feel a certain gratification in publicly mentioning as
good--informs us, that when a cat died in the dwelling of an ancient
Egyptian, the owner shaved his eyebrows as a mark of grief, embalmed the
defunct animal in a consecrated house, and carried it to be interred in
a considerable city of Lower Egypt, called 'Bubastis'--an Egyptian word
which I have discovered to mean The Sepulchre of all the Cats; whence it
is scarcely erroneous to infer--'
At this point the speaker's power of recollection and articulation
suddenly failed him, and Carrio--who had listened with perfect gravity
to his master's oration upon cats--took immediate advantage of the
opportunity now afforded him to speak again.
'The equipage which my patron was pleased to command to carry him to
Aricia,' said he, with a strong emphasis on the last word, 'now stands
in readiness at the private gate of the palace gardens.'
As he heard the word 'Aricia', the senator's powers of recollection and
perception seemed suddenly to return to him. Among that high order of
drinkers who can imbibe to the point of perfect enjoyment, and stop
short scientifically before the point of perfect oblivion, Vetranio
occupied an exalted rank. The wine he had swallowed during the night
had disordered his memory and slightly troubled his self-possession, but
had not deprived him of his understanding. There was nothing plebeian
even in his debauchery; there was an art and a refinement in his very
excesses.
'Aricia--Aricia!' he repeated to himself, 'ah! the villa that Julia lent
to me at Ravenna! The pleasures of the table must have obscured for a
moment the image of my beautiful pupil of other days, which now revives
before me again as Love resumes the dominion that Bacchus usurped! My
excellent Carrio,' he continued, speaking to the freedman, 'you have
done perfectly right in awakening me; delay not a moment more in
ordering my bath to be prepared, or my man-monster Ulpius, the king of
conspirators and high priest of all that is mysterious, will wait for me
in vain! And you, Glyco,' he pursued, when Carrio had departed,
addressing the singing-boy, 'array yourself for a journey, and wait with
my equipage at the garden-gate. I shall require you to accompany me in
my expedition to Aricia. But first, oh! gifted and valued songster, let
me reward you for the harmonious symphony that has just awakened me. Of
what rank of my musicians are you at present, Glyco?'
'Of the fifth,' replied the boy.
'Were you bought, or born in my house?' asked Vetranio.
'Neither; but bequeathed to you by Geta's testament,' rejoined the
gratified Glyco.
'I advance you,' continued Vetranio, 'to the privileges and the pay of
the first rank of my musicians; and I give you, as a proof of my
continued favour, this ring. In return for these obligations, I desire
to keep secret whatever concerns my approaching expedition; to employ
your softest music in soothing the ear of a young girl who will
accompany us--in calming her terrors if she is afraid, in drying her
tears if she weeps; and finally, to exercise your voice and your lute
incessantly in uniting the name 'Antonina' to the sweetest harmonies of
sound that your imagination can suggest.'
Pronouncing these words with an easy and benevolent smile, and looking
round complacently on the display of luxurious confusion about him,
Vetranio retired to the bath that was to prepare him for his approaching
triumph.
Meanwhile a scene of a very different nature was proceeding without, at
Numerian's garden-gate. Here were no singing-boys, no freedmen, no
profusion of rich treasures--here appeared only the solitary and
deformed figure of Ulpius, half hidden among surrounding trees, while he
waited at his appointed post. As time wore on, and still Vetranio did
not appear, the Pagan's self-possession began to desert him. He moved
restlessly backwards and forwards over the soft dewy grass, sometimes in
low tones calling upon his gods to hasten the tardy footsteps of the
libertine patrician, who was to be made the instrument of restoring to
the temples the worship of other days--sometimes cursing the reckless
delay of the senator, or exulting in the treachery by which he madly
believed his ambition was at last to be fulfilled; but still, whatever
his words or thoughts, wrought up to the same pitch of fierce, fanatic
enthusiasm which had strengthened him for the defence of his idols at
Alexandria, and had nerved him against the torment and misery of years
in his slavery in the copper mines of Spain.
The precious moments were speeding irrevocably onwards. His impatience
was rapidly changing to rage and despair as he strained his eyes for the
last time in the direction of the palace gardens, and now at length
discerned a white robe among the distant trees. Vetranio was rapidly
approaching him.
Restored by his bath, no effect of the night's festivity but its
exhilaration remained in the senator's brain. But for a slight
uncertainty in his gait, and an unusual vacancy in his smile, the
elegant gastronome might now have appeared to the closest observer
guiltless of the influence of intoxicating drinks. He advanced, radiant
with exultation, prepared for conquest, to the place where Ulpius
awaited him, and was about to address the Pagan with that satirical
familiarity so fashionable among the nobles of Rome in their
communications with the people, when the object of his intended
pleasantries sternly interrupted him, saying, in tones more of command
than of advice, 'Be silent! If you would succeed in your purpose,
follow me without uttering a word!'
There was something so fierce and determined in the tones of the old
man's voice--low, tremulous, and husky though they were--as he uttered
those words, that the bold, confident senator instinctively held his
peace as he followed his stern guide into Numerian's house. Avoiding the
regular entrance, which at that early hour of the morning was
necessarily closed, Ulpius conducted the patrician through a small
wicket into the subterranean apartment, or rather outhouse, which was
his customary, though comfortless, retreat in his leisure hours, and
which was hardly ever entered by the other members of the Christian's
household.
From the low, arched brick ceiling of this place hung an earthenware
lamp, whose light, small and tremulous, left all the corners of the
apartment in perfect obscurity. The thick buttresses that projected
inwards from the walls, made visible by their prominence, displayed on
their surfaces rude representations of idols and temples drawn in chalk,
and covered with strange, mysterious hieroglyphics. On a block of stone
which served as a table lay some fragments of small statues, which
Vetranio recognised as having belonged to the old, accredited
representations of Pagan idols. Over the sides of the table itself were
scrawled in Latin characters these two words, 'Serapis', 'Macrinus'; and
about its base lay some pieces of torn, soiled linen, which still
retained enough of their former character, both in shape, size, and
colour, to convince Vetranio that they had once served as the vestments
of a Pagan priest. Further than this the senator's observation did not
carry him, for the close, almost mephitic atmosphere of the place
already began to affect him unfavourably. He felt a suffocating
sensation in his throat and a dizziness in his head. The restorative
influence of his recent bath declined rapidly. The fumes of the wine he
had drunk in the night, far from having been, as he imagined,
permanently dispersed, again mounted to his head. He was obliged to
lean against the stone table to preserved his equilibrium as he faintly
desired the Pagan to shorten their sojourn in his miserable retreat.
Without even noticing the request, Ulpius hurriedly proceeded to erase
the drawings on the buttresses and the inscriptions on the table. Then
collecting the fragments of statues and the pieces of linen, he
deposited them in a hiding-place in the corner of the apartment. This
done, he returned to the stone against which Vetranio supported himself,
and for a few minutes silently regarded the senator with a firm,
earnest, and penetrating gaze.
A dark suspicion that he had betrayed himself into the hands of a
villain, who was then plotting some atrocious project connected with his
safety or honour, began to rise on the senator's bewildered brain as he
unwillingly submitted to the penetrating examination of the Pagan's
glance. At that moment, however, the withered lips of the old man slowly
parted, and he began to speak. Whether as he looked on Vetranio's
disturbed countenance, and marked his unsteady gait, the heart of
Ulpius, for the first time since his introduction to the senator,
misgave him when he thought of their monstrous engagement; or whether
the near approach of the moment that was henceforth, as he wildly
imagined, to fix Vetranio as his assistant and ally, so powerfully
affected his mind that it instinctively sought to vent its agitation
through the natural medium of words, it is useless to inquire. Whatever
his motives for speech, the impressive earnestness of his manner gave
evidence of the depth and intensity of his emotions as he addressed the
senator thus:--
'I have submitted to servitude in a Christian's house, I have suffered
the contamination of a Christian's prayers, to gain the use of your
power and station when the time to employ them should arrive. The hour
has now come when my part of the conditions of our engagement is to be
performed; the hour will yet come when your part shall be exacted from
you in turn! Do you wonder at what I have done and what I will do? Do
you marvel that a household drudge should speak thus to a nobleman of
Rome? Are you astonished that I risk so much as to venture on enlisting
you--by the sacrifice of the girl who now slumbers above--in the cause
whose end is the restoration of our fathers' gods, and in whose service
I have suffered and grown old? Listen, and you shall hear from what I
have fallen--you shall know what I once was!' 'I adjure you by all the
gods and goddesses of our ancient worship, let me hear you where I can
breathe--in the garden, on the housetop, anywhere but in this dungeon!'
murmured the senator in entreating accents.
'My birth, my parents, my education, my ancient abode--these I will not
disclose,' interrupted the Pagan, raising one arm authoritatively, as if
to obstruct Vetranio from approaching the door. 'I have sworn by my
gods, that until the day of restitution these secrets of my past life
shall remain unrevealed to strangers' ears. Unknown I entered Rome, and
unknown I will labour in Rome until the projects I have lived for are
crowned with success! It is enough that I confess to you that with
those sacred images whose fragments you have just beheld, I was once
lodged; that those sacred vestments whose remains you discerned at your
feet, I once wore. To attain the glories of the priesthood there was
nothing that I did not resign, to preserve them there was nothing I did
not perform, to recover them there is nothing that I will not attempt!
I was once illustrious, prosperous, beloved; of my glory, my happiness,
my popularity, the Christians have robbed me, and I will yet live to
requite it heavily at their hands! I had a guardian who loved me in my
youth; the Christians murdered him! A temple was under the rule of my
manhood; the Christians destroyed it! The people of a whole nation once
listened to my voice; the Christians have dispersed them! The wise, the
great, the beautiful, the good, were once devoted to me; the Christians
have made me a stranger at their doors, and outcast of their affections
and thoughts! For all this shall I take no vengeance? Shall I not plot
to rebuild my ruined temple, and win back, in my age, the honours that
adorned me in my youth?'
'Assuredly!--at once--without delay!' stammered Vetranio, returning the
stern and inquiring gaze of the Pagan with a bewildered, uneasy stare.
'To mount over the bodies of the Christian slain,' continued the old
man, his sinister eyes dilating in anticipated triumph as he whispered
close at the senator's ear, 'to rebuild the altars that the Christians
have overthrown, is the ambition that has made light to me the
sufferings of my whole life. I have battled, and it has sustained me in
the midst of carnage; I have wandered, and it has been my home in the
desert; I have failed, and it has supported me; I have been threatened
with death, and it has preserved me from fear; I have been cast into
slavery, and it has made my fetters light. You see me now, old,
degraded, lonely--believe that I long neither for wife, children,
tranquility, nor possessions; that I desire no companion but my
cherished and exalted purpose! Remember, then, in the hour of
performance the promise you have now made to aid me in the achievement
of that purpose! Remember that you are a Pagan yourself! Feast, laugh,
carouse with your compeers; be still the airy jester, the gay companion;
but never forget the end to which you are vowed--the destiny of glory
that the restoration of our deities has in store for us both!'
He ceased. Though his voice, while he spoke, never rose beyond a
hoarse, monotonous, half-whispering tone, all the ferocity of his abused
and degraded nature was for the instant thoroughly aroused by his
recapitulation of his wrongs. Had Vetranio at this moment shown any
symptoms of indecision, or spoken any words of discouragement, he would
have murdered him on the spot where they stood. Every feature in the
Pagan's seared and livid countenance expressed the stormy emotions that
were rushing over his heart as he now confronted his bewildered yet
attentive listener. His firm, menacing position; his poor and scanty
garments; his wild, shaggy hair; his crooked, distorted form; his stern,
solemn, unwavering gaze--opposed as they were (under the fitful
illumination of the expiring lamp and the advancing daylight) to the
unsteady gait, the vacant countenance, the rich robes, the youthful
grace of form and delicacy of feature of the object of his steady
contemplation, made so wild and strange a contrast between his patrician
ally and himself that they scarcely looked like beings of the same race.
Nothing could be more immense than the difference, more wild than the
incongruity between them. It was sickness hand-in-hand with health;
pain marshalled face to face with enjoyment; darkness ranged in
monstrous discordance by the very side of light.
The next instant--just as the astonished senator was endeavouring to
frame a suitable answer to the solemn adjuration that had been addressed
to him--Ulpius seized his arm, and opening a door at the inner extremity
of the apartment, led him up some stairs that conducted to the interior
of the house.
They passed the hall, on the floor of which still lay the fragments of
the broken lute, dimly distinguishable in the soft light of daybreak;
and ascending another staircase, paused at a little door at the top,
which Ulpius cautiously opened, and in a moment afterwards Vetranio was
admitted into Antonina's bed-chamber.
The room was of no great extent; its scanty furniture was of the most
ordinary description; no ornaments glittered on its walls; no frescoes
adorned its ceiling; and yet there was a simple elegance in its
appearance, an unobtrusive propriety in its minutest details, which made
it at once interesting and attractive to the eye. From the white
curtains at the window to the vase of flowers standing by the bedside,
the same natural refinement of taste appeared in the arrangement of all
that the apartment contained. No sound broke the deep silence of the
place, save the low, soft breathing, occasionally interrupted by a long,
trembling sigh, of its sleeping occupant. The sole light in the room
consisted of a little lamp, so placed in the middle of the flowers round
the sides of the vase that no extended or steady illumination was cast
upon any object. There was something in the decent propriety of all
that was visible in the bed-chamber; in the soft obscurity of its
atmosphere; in the gentle and musical sound that alone interrupted its
magical stillness, impressive enough, it might have been imagined, to
have awakened some hesitation in the bosom of the boldest libertine ere
he deliberately proceeded to intrude on the unprotected slumbers of its
occupant. No such feeling of indecision, however, troubled the thoughts
of Vetranio as he cast a rapid glance round the apartment which he had
venture so treacherously to invade. The fumes of the wine he had
imbibed at the banquet had been so thoroughly resuscitated by the
oppressive atmosphere of the subterranean retreat he had just quitted,
as to have left him nothing of his more refined nature. All that was
honourable or intellectual in his character had now completely ceded to
all that was base and animal. He looked round, and perceiving that
Ulpius had silently quitted him, softly closed the door. Then advancing
to the bedside with the utmost caution compatible with the involuntary
unsteadiness of an intoxicated man, he took the lamp from the vase in
which it was half concealed, and earnestly surveyed by its light the
figure of the sleeping girl.
The head of Antonina was thrown back and rested rather over than on her
pillow. Her light linen dress had become so disordered during the night
that it displayed her throat and part of her bosom, in all the dawning
beauties of their youthful formation, to the gaze of the licentious
Roman. One hand half supported her head, and was almost entirely hidden
in the locks of her long black hair, which had escaped from the white
cincture intended to confine it, and now streamed over the pillow in
dazzling contrast to the light bed-furniture around it. The other hand
held tightly clasped to her bosom the precious fragment of her broken
lute. The deep repose expressed in her position had not thoroughly
communicated itself to her face. Now and then her slightly parted lips
moved and trembled, and ever and anon a change, so faint and fugitive
that it was hardly perceptible, appeared in her complexion, breathing on
the soft olive that was its natural hue, the light rosy flush which the
emotions of the past night had impressed on it ere she slept. Her
position, in its voluptuous negligence, seemed the very type of Oriental
loveliness; while her face, calm and sorrowful in its expression,
displayed the more refined and sober graces of the European model. And
thus these two characteristics of two different orders of beauty,
appearing conjointly under one form, produced a whole so various and yet
so harmonious, so impressive and yet so attractive, that the senator, as
he bent over the couch, though the warm, soft breath of the young girl
played on his cheeks and waved the tips of his perfumed locks, could
hardly imagine that the scene before him was more than a bright,
delusive dream.
While Vetranio was yet absorbed in admiration of her charms, Antonina's
form slightly moved, as if agitated by the influence of a passing dream.
The change thus accomplished in her position broke the spell that its
former stillness and beauty had unconsciously wrought to restrain the
unhallowed ardour of the profligate Roman. He now passed his arm round
her warm, slender figure, and gently raising her till her head rested on
his shoulder as he sat by the bed, imprinted kiss after kiss on the pure
lips that sleep had innocently abandoned to him.
As he had foreseen, Antonina instantly awoke, but, to his unmeasured
astonishment, neither started nor shrieked. The moment she had opened
her eyes she had recognised the person of Vetranio; and that
overwhelming terror which suspends in its victims the use of every
faculty, whether of the body or the mind, had immediately possessed
itself of her heart. Too innocent to imagine the real motive that
prompted the senator's intrusion on her slumbers, where others of her
sex would have foreboded dishonour, she feared death. All her father's
vague denunciations against the enormities of the nobles of Rome rushed
in an instant over her mind, and her childish imagination pictured
Vetranio as armed with some terrible and mysterious vengeance to be
wreaked on her for having avoided all communication with him as soon as
she had gained possession of her lute. Prostrate beneath the petrifying
influence of her fears, motionless and powerless before him as its prey
before the serpent, she made no effort to move or speak; but looked up
steadfastly into the senator's face, her large eyes fixed and dilated in
a gaze of overpowering terror.
Intoxicated though he was, the affrighted expression of the poor girl's
pale, rigid countenance did not escape Vetranio's notice; and he taxed
his bewildered brain for such soothing and reassuring expressions as
would enable him to introduce his profligate proposals with some chance
that they would be listened to and understood.
'Dearest pupil! Most beautiful of Roman maidens,' he began in the
husky, monotonous tones of inebriety, 'abandon your fears! I come
hither, wafted by the breath of love, to restore the worship of the--I
would say to bear you on my bosom to a villa--the name of which has for
the moment escaped my remembrance. You cannot have forgotten that it
was I who taught you to compose the Nightingale Sauce--or, no--let me
rather say to play upon the lute. Love, music, pleasure, all await you
in the arms of your attached Vetranio. Your eloquent silence speaks
encouragement to my heart. Beloved Anto--'
Here the senator suddenly paused; for the eyes of the girl, which had
hitherto been fixed on him with the same expression of blank dismay that
had characterised them from the first, slowly moved in the direction of
the door. The instant afterwards a slight noise caught Vetranio's ear,
and Antonina shuddered so violently as he pressed her to his side that
he felt it through his whole frame. Slowly and unwillingly he withdrew
his gaze from the pale yet lovely countenance on which it had been
fixed, and looked up.
At the open door, pale, silent, motionless, stood the master of the
house.
Incapable, from the confusion of his ideas, of any other feeling than
the animal instinct of self-defence, Vetranio no sooner beheld
Numerian's figure than he rose, and drawing a small dagger from his
bosom, attempted to advance on the intruder. He found himself, however,
restrained by Antonina, who had fallen on her knees before him, and
grasped his robe with a strength which seemed utterly incompatible with
the slenderness of her form and the feebleness of her sex and age.
The first voice that broke the silence which ensued was Numerian's. He
advanced, his face ghastly with anguish, his lip quivering with
suppressed emotions, to the senator's side, and addressed him thus:--
'Put up your weapon; I come but to ask a favour at your hands.'
Vetranio mechanically obeyed him. There was something in the stern
calmness, frightful at such a moment, of the Christian's manner that
awed him in spite of himself.
'The favour I would petition for,' continued Numerian, in low, steady,
bitter tones, 'is that you would remove your harlot there, to your own
abode. Here are no singing-boys, no banqueting-halls, no perfumed
couches. The retreat of a solitary old man is no place for such an one
as she. I beseech you, remove her to a more congenial home. She is
well fitted for her trade; her mother was a harlot before her!'
He laughed scornfully, and pointed, as he spoke, to the figure of the
unhappy girl kneeling with outstretched arms at his feet.
'Father, father!' she cried, in accents bereft of their native softness
and melody, 'have you forgotten me?'
'I know you not!' he replied, thrusting her from him. 'Return to his
bosom; you shall never more be pressed to mine. Go to his palace; my
house is yours no longer! You are his harlot, not my daughter! I
command you--go!'
As he advanced towards her with fierce glance and threatening demeanour,
she suddenly rose up. Her reason seemed crushed within her as she looked
with frantic earnestness from Vetranio to her father, and then back
again from her father to Vetranio. On one side she saw an enemy who had
ruined her she knew not how, and who threatened her with she knew not
what; on the other, a parent who had cast her off. For one instant she
directed a final look on the room, that, sad and lonely though it was,
had still been a home to her; and then, without a word or a sigh, she
turned, and crouching like a beaten dog, fled from the house.
During the whole of the scene Vetranio had stood so fixed in the
helpless astonishment of intoxication as to be incapable of moving or
uttering a word. All that took place during the short and terrible
interview between father and child utterly perplexed him. He heard no
loud, violent anger on one side, no clamorous petitioning for
forgiveness on the other. The stern old man whom Antonina had called
father, and who had been pointed out to him as the most austere
Christian in Rome, far from avenging his intrusion on Antonina's
slumber, had voluntarily abandoned his daughter to his licentious will.
That the anger or irony of so severe a man should inspire such an action
as this, or that Numerian, like his servant, was plotting to obtain some
strange mysterious favour from him by using Antonina as a bribe, seemed
perfectly impossible. all that passed before the senator was, to his
bewildered imagination, thoroughly incomprehensible. Frivolous,
thoughtless, profligate as he might be, his nature was not radically
base, and when the scene of which he had been the astounded witness was
abruptly terminated by the flight of Antonina, the look of frantic
misery fixed on him by the unfortunate girl at the moment of her
departure, almost sobered him for the instant, as he stood before the
now solitary father gazing vacantly around him with emotions of
uncontrollable confusion and dismay.
Meanwhile a third person was now approaching to join the two occupants
of the bedchamber abandoned by its ill-fated mistress. Although in the
subterranean retreat to which he had retired on leaving Vetranio, Ulpius
had not noticed the silent entrance of the master of the house, he had
heard through the open doors the sound, low though it was, of the
Christian's voice. As he rose, suspecting all things and prepared for
every emergency, to ascend to the bedchamber, he saw, while he mounted
the lowest range of stairs, a figure in white pass rapidly through the
hall and disappear by the principal entrance of the house. He hesitated
for an instant and looked after it, but the fugitive figure had passed
so swiftly in the uncertain light of early morning that he was unable to
identify it, and he determined to ascertain the progress of events, now
that Numerian must have discovered a portion at least of the plot
against his daughter and himself, by ascending immediately to Antonina's
apartment, whatever might be the consequences of his intrusion at such
an hour on her father's wrath.
As soon as the Pagan appeared before him, a sensible change took place
in Vetranio. The presence of Ulpius in the chamber was a positive
relief to the senator's perturbed faculties, after the mysterious,
overpowering influence that the moral command expressed in the mere
presence of the father and the master of the house, at such an hour, had
exercised over them. Over Ulpius he had an absolute right, Ulpius was
his dependant; and he determined, therefore, to extort from the servant
whom he despised an explanation of the mysteries in the conduct of the
master whom he feared, and the daughter whom he began to doubt.
'Where is Antonina?' he cried, starting as if from a trance, and
advancing fiercely towards the treacherous Pagan. 'She has left the
room--she must have taken refuge with you.'
With a slow and penetrating gaze Ulpius looked round the apartment. A
faint agitation was perceptible in his livid countenance, but he uttered
not a word.
The senator's face became pale and red with alternate emotions of
apprehension and rage. He seized the Pagan by the throat, his eyes
sparkled, his blood boiled, he began to suspect even then that Antonina
was lost to him for ever.
'I ask you again where is she?' he shouted in a voice of fury. 'If
through this night's work she is lost or harmed, I will revenge it on
you. Is this the performance of your promise? Do you think that I will
direct your desired restoration of the gods of old for this? If evil
comes to Antonina through your treachery, sooner than assist in your
secret projects, I would see you and your accursed deities all burning
together in the Christians' hell! Where is the girl, you slave?
Villain, where was your vigilance, when you let that man surprise us at
our first interview?'
He turned towards Numerian as he spoke. Trouble and emergency gift the
faculties with a more than mortal penetration. Every word that he had
uttered had eaten its burning way into the father's heart. Hours of
narrative could not have convinced him how fatally he had been deceived,
more thoroughly than the few hasty expressions he had just heard. No
word passed his lips--no action betrayed his misery. He stood before
the spoilers of his home, changed in an instant from the courageous
enthusiast to the feeble, helpless, heart-broken man.
Though all the ferocity of his old Roman blood had been roused in
Vetranio, as he threatened Ulpius, the father's look of cold, silent,
frightful despair froze it in his young veins in an instant. His heart
was still the impressible heart of youth; and, struck for the first time
in his life with emotions of horror and remorse, he advanced a step to
offer such explanation and atonement as he best might, when the voice of
Ulpius suspended his intentions, and made him pause to listen.
'She passed me in the hall,' muttered the Pagan, doggedly. 'I did my
part in betraying her into your power--it was for you to hinder her in
her flight. Why did you not strike him to the earth,' he continued,
pointing with a mocking smile to Numerian, 'when he surprised you? You
are wealthy and a noble of Rome; murder would have been no crime in
you!'
'Stand back!' cried the senator, thrusting him from the position he had
hitherto occupied in the door-way. 'She may be recovered even yet! All
Rome shall be searched for her!'
The next instant he disappeared from the room, and the master and
servant were left together alone.
The silence that now reigned in the apartment was broken by distant
sounds of uproar and confusion in the streets of the city beneath.
These ominous noises had arisen with the dawn of day, but the different
emotions of the occupants of Numerian's abode had so engrossed them,
that the turmoil in the outer world had passed unheeded by all. No
sooner, however, had Vetranio departed than it caught the attention of
Ulpius, and he advanced to the window. What he there saw and heard was
of no ordinary importance, for it at once fixed him to the spot where he
stood in mute and ungovernable surprise.
While Ulpius was occupied at the window, Numerian had staggered to the
side of the bed which his ill-timed severity had made vacant, perhaps
for ever. The power of action, the capacity to go forth and seek his
child himself, was entirely suspended in the agony of her loss, as the
miserable man fell on his knees, and in the anguish of his heart
endeavoured to find solace in prayer. In the positions they severally
occupied the servant and the master long remained--the betrayer watching
at the window, the betrayed mourning at his lost daughter's bed--both
alike silent, both alike unconscious of the lapse of time.
At length, apparently unaware at first that he was not alone in the
room, Numerian spoke. In his low, broken, tremulous accents, none of
his adherents would have recognised the voice of the eloquent preacher--
the bold chastiser of the vices of the Church. The whole nature of the
man--moral, intellectual, physical--seemed fatally and completely
changed.
'She was innocent, she was innocent!' he whispered to himself. 'And
even had she been guilty, was it for me to drive her from my doors! My
part, like my Redeemer's, was to teach repentance, and to show mercy!
Accursed be the pride and anger that drove justice and patience from my
heart, when I beheld her, as I thought, submitting herself without a
struggle or a cry, to my dishonour, and hers! Could I not have imagined
her terror, could I not have remembered her purity? Alas, my beloved,
if I myself have been the dupe of the wicked, what marvel is it that you
should have been betrayed as well! And I have driven you from me, you,
from whose mouth no word of anger ever dropped! I have thrust you from
my bosom, you, who were the adornment of my age! My death approaches,
and you will not be by to pardon my heavy offence, to close my weary
eyes, to mourn by my solitary tomb! God--oh God! If I am left thus
lonely on the earth, thou hast punished me beyond what I can bear!'
He paused--his emotions for the instant bereft him of speech. After an
interval, he muttered to himself in a low, moaning voice--'I called her
harlot! My pure, innocent child! I called her harlot--I called her
harlot!'
In a paroxysm of despair, he started up and looked distractedly around
him. Ulpius still stood motionless at the window. At the sight of the
ruthless Pagan he trembled in every limb. All those infirmities of age
that had been hitherto spared him, seemed to overwhelm him in an
instant. He feebly advanced to his betrayer's side, and addressed him
thus:--
'I have lodged you, taught you, cared for you; I have never intruded on
your secrets, never doubted your word, and for all this, you have repaid
me by plotting against my daughter and deceiving me! If your end was to
harm me by assailing my child's happiness and honour you have succeeded!
If you would banish me from Rome, if you would plunge me into obscurity,
to serve some mysterious ambition of your own, you may dispose of me as
you will! I bow before the terrible power of your treachery! I will
renounce whatever you command, if you will restore me to my child! I am
helpless and miserable; I have neither heart nor strength to seek her
myself! You, who know all things and can dare all dangers, may restore
her to pardon and bless me, if you will! Remember, whoever you really
are, that you were once helpless and alone, and that you are still old,
like me! Remember that I have promised to abandon to you whatever you
desire! Remember that no woman's voice can cheer me, no woman's heart
feel for me, now that I am old and lonely, but my daughter's! I have
guessed from the words of the nobleman whom you serve, what are the
designs you cherish and the faith you profess; I will neither betray the
one nor assault the other! I thought that my labours for the Church
were more to me than anything on earth, but now, that through my fault,
my daughter is driven from her father's roof, I know that she is dearer
to me than the greatest of my designs; I must gain her pardon; I must
win back her affection before I die! You are powerful and can recover
her! Ulpius! Ulpius!'
As he spoke, the Christian knelt at the Pagan's feet. It was terrible
to see the man of affection and integrity thus humbled before the man of
heartlessness and crime.
Ulpius turned to behold him, then without a word he raised him from the
ground, and thrusting him to the window, pointed with flashing eyes to
the wide view without.
The sun had arisen high in the heaven and beamed in dazzling brilliancy
over Rome and the suburbs. A vague, fearful, mysterious desolation
seemed to have suddenly overwhelmed the whole range of dwellings beyond
the walls. No sounds rose from the gardens, no population idled in the
streets. The ramparts on the other hand were crowded at every visible
point with people of all ranks, and the distant squares and
amphitheatres of the city itself, swarmed like ant-hills to the eye with
the crowds that struggled within them. Confused cries and strange wild
noises rose at all points from these masses of human beings. The whole
of Rome seemed the prey of a vast and universal revolt.
Extraordinary and affrighting as was the scene at the moment when he
beheld it, it passed unheeded before the eyes of the scarce conscious
father. He was blind to all sights but his daughter's form, deaf to all
sounds but her voice; and he murmured as he looked vacantly forth upon
the wild view before him, 'Where is my child!--where is my child!'
'What is your child to me? What are the fortunes of affections of man
or woman, at such an hour as this?' cried the Pagan, as he stood by
Numerian, with features horribly animated by the emotions of fierce
delight and triumph that were raging within him at the prospect he
beheld. 'Dotard, look from this window! Listen to those voices! The
gods whom I serve, the god whom you and your worship would fain have
destroyed, have risen to avenge themselves at last! Behold those
suburbs, they are left desolate! Hear those cries--they are from Roman
lips! While your household's puny troubles have run their course, this
city of apostates has been doomed! In the world's annals this morning
will never be forgotten! THE GOTHS ARE AT THE GATES OF ROME!'
CHAPTER 8. THE GOTHS.
It was no false rumour that had driven the populace of the suburbs to
fly to the security of the city walls. It was no ill-founded cry of
terror that struck the ear of Ulpius, as he stood at Numerian's window.
The name of Rome had really lost its pristine terrors; the walls of
Rome, those walls which had morally guarded the Empire by their renown,
as they had actually guarded its capital by their strength, were
deprived at length of their ancient inviolability. An army of
barbarians had indeed penetrated for conquest and for vengeance to the
City of the World! The achievement which the invasions of six hundred
years had hitherto attempted in vain, was now accomplished, and
accomplished by the men whose forefathers had once fled like hunted
beasts to their native fastnesses, before the legions of the
Caesars--'The Goths were at the gates of Rome!'
And now, as his warriors encamped around him, as he saw the arrayed
hosts whom his summons had gathered together, and his energy led on,
threatening at their doors the corrupt senate who had deceived, and the
boastful populace who had despised him, what emotions stirred within the
heart of Alaric! As the words of martial command fell from his lips,
and his eyes watched the movements of the multitudes around him, what
exalted aspirations, what daring resolves, grew and strengthened in the
mind of the man who was the pioneer of that mighty revolution, which
swept from one quarter of the world the sway, the civilisation, the very
life and spirit of centuries of ancient rule! High thoughts gathered
fast in his mind; a daring ambition expanded within him--the ambition,
not of the barbarian plunderer, but of the avenger who had come to
punish; not of the warrior who combated for combat's sake, but of the
hero who was vowed to conquer and to sway. From the far-distant days
when Odin was driven from his territories by the romans, to the night
polluted by the massacre of the hostages in Aquileia, the hour of just
and terrible retribution for Gothic wrongs had been delayed through the
weary lapse of years, and the warning convulsion of bitter strifes, to
approach at last under him. He looked on the towering walls before him,
the only invader since Hannibal by whom they had been beheld; and he
felt as he looked, that his new aspirations did not deceive him, that
his dreams of dominion were brightening into proud reality, that his
destiny was gloriously linked with the overthrow of Imperial Rome!
But even in the moment of approaching triumph, the leader of the Goths
was still wily in purpose and moderate in action. His impatient
warriors waited but the word to commence the assault, to pillage the
city, and to slaughter the inhabitants; but he withheld it. Scarcely
had the army halted before the gates of Rome, when the news was
promulgated among their ranks, that Alaric, for purposes of his own, had
determined to reduce the city by a blockade.
The numbers of his forces, increased during his march by the accession
of thirty thousand auxiliaries, were now divided into battalions,
varying in strength according to the service that was required of them.
These divisions stretched round the city walls, and though occupying
separate posts, and devoted to separate duties, were so arranged as to
be capable of uniting at a signal in any numbers, on any given point.
Each body of men was commanded by a tried and veteran warrior, in whose
fidelity Alaric could place the most implicit trust, and to whom he
committed the duty of enforcing the strictest military discipline that
had ever prevailed among the Gothic ranks. Before each of the twelve
principal gates a separate encampment was raised. Multitudes watched the
navigation of the Tiber in every possible direction, with untiring
vigilance; and not one of the ordinary inlets to Rome, however
apparently unimportant, was overlooked. By these means, every mode of
communication between the beleaguered city and the wide and fertile
tracts of land around it, was effectually prevented. When it is
remembered that this elaborate plan of blockade was enforced against a
place containing, at the lowest possible computation, twelve hundred
thousand inhabitants, destitute of magazines for food within its walls,
dependent for supplies on its regular contributions from the country
without, governed by an irresolute senate, and defended by an enervated
army, the horrors that now impended over the besieged Romans are as
easily imagined as described.
Among the ranks of the army that now surrounded the doomed city, the
division appointed to guard the Pincian Gate will be found, at this
juncture, most worthy of the reader's attention: for one of the
warriors appointed to its subordinate command was the young chieftain
Hermanric, who had been accompanied by Goisvintha through all the toils
and dangers of the march, since the time when we left him at the Italian
Alps.
The watch had been set, the tents had been pitched, the defences had
been raised on the portion of ground selected to occupy every possible
approach to the Pincian Gate, as Hermanric retired to await by
Goisvintha's side, whatever further commands he might yet be entrusted
with, by his superiors in the Gothic camp. The spot occupied by the
young warrior's simple tent was on a slight eminence, apart from the
positions chosen by his comrades, eastward of the city gate, and
overlooking at some distance the deserted gardens of the suburbs, and
the stately palaces of the Pincian Hill. Behind his temporary dwelling
was the open country, reduced to a fertile solitude by the flight of its
terrified inhabitants; and at each side lay one unvarying prospect of
military strength and preparation, stretching out its animated confusion
of soldiers, tents, and engines of warfare, as far as the sight could
reach. It was now evening. The walls of Rome, enshrouded in a rising
mist, showed dim and majestic to the eyes of the Goths. The noises in
the beleaguered city softened and deepened, seeming to be muffled in the
growing darkness of the autumn night, and becoming less and less audible
as the vigilant besiegers listened to them from their respective posts.
One by one, lights broke wildly forth at irregular distances, in the
Gothic camp. Harshly and fitfully the shrill call of the signal
trumpets rang from rank to rank; and through the dim thick air rose, in
the intervals of the more important noises, the clash of heavy hammers
and the shout of martial command. Wherever the preparations for the
blockade were still incomplete, neither the approach of night nor the
pretext of weariness were suffered for an instant to hinder their
continued progress. Alaric's indomitable will conquered every obstacle
of nature, and every deficiency of man. Darkness had no obscurity that
forced him to repose, and lassitude no eloquence that lured him to
delay.
In no part of the army had the commands of the Gothic king been so
quickly and intelligently executed, as in that appointed to watch the
Pincian Gate. The interview of Hermanric and Goisvintha in the young
chieftain's tent, was, consequently, uninterrupted for a considerable
space of time by any fresh mandate from the head-quarters of the camp.
In outward appearance, both the brother and sister had undergone a
change remarkable enough to be visible, even by the uncertain light of
the torch which now shone on them as they stood together at the door of
the tent. The features of Goisvintha--which at the period when we first
beheld her on the shores of the mountain lake, retained, in spite of her
poignant sufferings, much of the lofty and imposing beauty that had been
their natural characteristic in her happier days--now preserved not the
slightest traces of their former attractions. Its freshness had
withered from her complexion, its fulness had departed from her form.
Her eyes had contracted an unvarying sinister expression of malignant
despair, and her manner had become sullen, repulsive, and distrustful.
This alteration in her outward aspect, was but the result of a more
perilous change in the disposition of her heart. The death of her last
child at the very moment when her flight had successfully directed her
to the protection of her people, had affected her more fatally than all
the losses she had previously sustained. The difficulties and dangers
that she had encountered in saving her offspring from the massacre; the
dismal certainty that the child was the only one, out of all the former
objects of her affection, left to her to love; the wild sense of triumph
that she experienced in remembering, that in this single instance her
solitary efforts had thwarted the savage treachery of the Court of Rome,
had inspired her with feelings of devotion towards the last of her
household which almost bordered on insanity. And, now that her beloved
charge, her innocent victim, her future warrior, had, after all her
struggles for his preservation, pined and died; now that she was
childless indeed; now that Roman cruelty had won its end in spite of all
her patience, all her courage, all her endurance; every noble feeling
within her sunk, annihilated at the shock. Her sorrow took the fatal
form which irretrievable destroys, in women, all the softer and better
emotions;--it changed to the despair that asks no sympathy, to the grief
that holds no communion with tears.
Less elevated in intellect and less susceptible in disposition, the
change to sullenness of expression and abruptness of manner now visible
in Hermanric, resulted rather from his constant contemplation of
Goisvintha's gloomy despair, tan from any actual revolution in his own
character. In truth, however many might be the points of outward
resemblance now discernible between the brother and sister, the
difference in degree of their moral positions, implied of itself the
difference in degree of the inward sorrow of each. Whatever the trials
and afflictions that might assail him, Hermanric possessed the healthful
elasticity of youth and the martial occupations of manhood to support
them. Goisvintha could repose on neither. With no employment but
bitter remembrance to engage her thoughts, with no kindly aspiration,
no soothing hope to fill her heart, she was abandoned irrevocably to the
influence of unpartaken sorrow and vindictive despair.
Both the woman and the warrior stood together in silence for some time.
At length, without taking his eyes from the dusky, irregular mass before
him, which was all that night now left visible of the ill-fated city,
Hermanric addressed Goisvintha thus:--
'Have you no words of triumph, as you look on the ramparts that your
people have fought for generations to behold at their mercy, as we now
behold them? Can a woman of the Goths be silent when she stands before
the city of Rome?'
'I came hither to behold Rome pillaged, and Romans slaughtered; what is
Rome blockaded to me?' replied Goisvintha fiercely. 'The treasures
within that city will buy its safety from our King, as soon as the
tremblers on the ramparts gain heart enough to penetrate a Gothic camp.
Where is the vengeance that you promised me among those distant palaces?
Do I behold you carrying that destruction through the dwellings of Rome,
which the soldiers of yonder city carried through the dwellings of the
Goths? Is it for plunder or for glory that the army is here? I
thought, in my woman's delusion, that it was for revenge!'
'Dishonour will avenge you--Famine will avenge you--Pestilence will
avenge you!'
'They will avenge my nation; they will not avenge me. I have seen the
blood of Gothic women spilt around me--I have looked on my children's
corpses bleeding at my feet! Will a famine that I cannot see, and a
pestilence that I cannot watch, give me vengeance for this? Look! Here
is the helmet-crest of my husband and your brother--the helmet-crest
that was flung to me as a witness that the Romans had slain him! Since
the massacre of Aquileia it has never quitted my bosom. I have sworn
that the blood which stains and darkens it, shall be washed off in the
blood of the people of Rome. Though I should perish under those
accursed walls; though you in your soulless patience should refuse me
protection and aid; I, widowed, weakened, forsaken as I am, will hold to
the fulfilment of my oath!'
As she ceased she folded the crest in her mantle, and turned abruptly
from Hermanric in bitter and undissembled scorn. All the attributes of
her sex, in thought, expression, and manner, seemed to have deserted
her. The very tones she spoke in were harsh and unwomanly.
Every word she had uttered, every action she had displayed, had sunk
into the inmost heart, had stirred the fiercest passions of the young
warrior whom she addressed. The first national sentiment discoverable
in the day-spring of the ages of Gothic history, is the love of war; but
the second is the reverence of woman. This latter feeling--especially
remarkable among so fierce and unsusceptible a people as the ancient
Scandinavians--was entirely unconnected with those strong attaching
ties, which are the natural consequence of the warm temperaments of more
southern nations; for love was numbered with the base inferior passions,
in the frigid and hardy composition of the warrior of the north. It was
the offspring of reasoning and observation, not of instinctive sentiment
and momentary impulse. In the wild, poetical code of the old Gothic
superstition was one axiom, closely and strangely approximating to an
important theory in the Christian scheme--the watchfulness of an
omnipotent Creator over a finite creature. Every action of the body,
every impulse of the mind, was the immediate result, in the system of
worship among the Goths of the direct, though invisible interference of
the divinities they adored. When, therefore, they observed that women
were more submitted in body to the mysterious laws of nature and
temperament, and more swayed in mind by the native and universal
instincts of humanity than themselves, they inferred as an inevitable
conclusion, that the female sex was more incessantly regarded, and more
constantly and remarkably influenced by the gods of their worship, than
the male. Acting under this persuasion, they committed the study of
medicine, the interpretation of dreams, and in many instances, the
mysteries of communication with the invisible world, to the care of
their women. The gentler sex became their counsellors in difficulty,
and their physicians in sickness--their companions rather than their
mistresses,--the objects of their veneration rather than the purveyors
of their pleasures. Although in after years, the national migrations of
the Goths changed the national temperament, although their ancient
mythology was exchanged for the worship of Christ, this prevailing
sentiment of their earliest existence as a people never entirely
deserted them; but, with different modifications and in different forms,
maintained much of its old supremacy through all changes of manners and
varieties of customs, descending finally to their posterity among the
present nations of Europe, in the shape of that established code of
universal courtesy to women, which is admitted to be one great
distinguishing mark between the social systems of the inhabitants of
civilised and uncivilised lands.
This powerful and remarkable ascendancy of the woman over the man, among
the Goths, could hardly be more strikingly displayed than in the
instance of Hermanric. It appeared, not only in the deteriorating
effect of the constant companionship of Goisvintha on his naturally
manly character, but also in the strong influence over his mind of the
last words of fury and disdain that she had spoken. His eyes gleamed
with anger, his cheeks flushed with shame, as he listened to those
passages in her wrathful remonstrance which reflected most bitterly on
himself. She had scarcely ceased, and turned to retire into the tent,
when he arrested her progress, and replied, in heightened and accusing
tones:--
'You wrong me by your words! When I saw you among the Alps, did I
refuse you protection? When the child was wounded, did I leave him to
suffer unaided? When he died, did I forsake him to rot upon the earth,
or abandon to his mother the digging of his grave? When we approached
Aquileia, and marched past Ravenna, did I forget that the sword hung at
my shoulder? Was it at my will that it remained sheathed, or that I
entered not the gates of the Roman towns, but passed by them in haste?
Was it not the command of the king that withheld me? and could I, his
warrior, disobey? I swear it to you, the vengeance that I promised, I
yearn to perform,--but is it for me to alter the counsels of Alaric?
Can I alone assault the city which it is his command that we should
blockade? What would you have of me?'
'I would have you remember,' retorted Goisvintha, indignantly, 'that
Romans slew your brother, and made me childless! I would have you
remember that a public warfare of years on years, is powerless to stay
one hour's craving of private vengeance! I would have you less
submitted to your general's wisdom, and more devoted to your own wrongs!
I would have you--like me--thirst for the blood of the first inhabitant
of yonder den of traitors, who--whether for peace or for war--passes the
precincts of its sheltering walls!'
She paused abruptly for an answer, but Hermanric uttered not a word.
The courageous heart of the young chieftain recoiled at the deliberate
act of assassination, pressed upon him in
Goisvintha's veiled yet expressive speech. To act with his comrades in
taking the city by assault, to outdo in the heat of battle the worst
horrors of the massacre of Aquileia, would have been achievements in
harmony with his wild disposition and warlike education; but, to submit
himself to Goisvintha's projects, was a sacrifice, that the very
peculiarities of his martial character made repugnant to his thoughts.
Emotions such as these he would have communicated to his companion, as
they passed through his mind; but there was something in the fearful and
ominous change that had occurred in her disposition since he had met her
among the Alps,--in her frantic, unnatural craving for bloodshed and
revenge, that gave her a mysterious and powerful influence over his
thoughts, his words, and even his actions. He hesitated and was silent.
'Have I not been patient?' continued Goisvintha, lowering her voice to
tones of earnest, agitated entreaty, which jarred upon Hermanric's ear,
as he thought who was the petitioner, and what would be the object of
the petition,--' Have I not been patient throughout the weary journey
from the Alps? Have I not waited for the hour of retribution, even
before the defenceless cities that we passed on the march? Have I not
at you instigation governed my yearning for vengeance, until the day
that should see you mounting those walls with the warriors of the Goths,
to scourge with fire and sword the haughty traitors of Rome? Has that
day come? Is it by this blockade that the requital you promised me over
the corpse of my murdered child, is to be performed? Remember the
perils I dared, to preserved the life of that last one of my
household,--and will you risk nothing to avenge his death? His
sepulchre is untended and solitary. Far from the dwellings of his
people, lost in the dawn of his beauty, slaughtered in the beginning of
his strength, lies the offspring of your brother's blood. And the
rest--the two children, who were yet infants; the father, who was brave
in battle and wise in council--where are they? Their bones whiten on
the shelterless plain, or rot unburied by the ocean shore! Think--had
they lived--how happily your days would have passed with them in the
time of peace! how gladly your brother would have gone forth with you to
the chase! how joyfully his boys would have nestled at your knees, to
gather from your lips the first lessons that should form them for the
warrior's life! Think of such enjoyments as these, and then think that
Roman swords have deprived you of them all!'
Her voice trembled, she ceased for a moment, and looked mournfully up
into Hermanric's averted face. Every feature in the young chieftain's
countenance expressed the tumult that her words had aroused within him.
He attempted to reply, but his voice was powerless in that trying
moment. His head drooped upon his heaving breast, and he sighed heavily
as, without speaking, he grasped Goisvintha by the hand. The object she
had pleaded for was nearly attained;--he was fast sinking beneath the
tempter's well-spread toils!
'Are you silent still?' she gloomily resumed. 'Do you wonder at this
longing for vengeance, at this craving for Roman blood? I tell you that
my desire has arisen within me, at promptings from the voices of an
unknown world. They urge me to seek requital on the nation who have
widowed and bereaved me--yonder, in their vaunted city, from their
pampered citizens, among their cherished homes--in the spot where their
shameful counsels take root, and whence their ruthless treacheries
derive their bloody source! In the book that our teachers worship, I
have heard it read, that "the voice of blood crieth from the ground!"
This is the voice--Hermanric, this is the voice that I have heard! I
have dreamed that I walked on a shore of corpses, by a sea of blood--I
have seen, arising from that sea, my husband's and my children's bodies,
gashed throughout with Roman wounds! They have called to me through the
vapour of carnage that was around them;--'Are we yet unavenged? Is the
sword of Hermanric yet sheathed?' Night after night have I seen this
vision and heard those voice, and hoped for no respite until the day
that saw the army encamped beneath the walls of Rome, and raising the
scaling ladders for the assault! And now, after all my endurance, how
has that day arrived? Accursed be the lust of treasure! It is more to
the warriors, and to you, than the justice of revenge!'
'Listen! listen!' cried Hermanric entreatingly.
'I listen no longer!' interrupted Goisvintha. 'The tongue of my people
is as a strange language in my ears; for it talks but of plunder and of
peace, of obedience, of patience, and of hope! I listen no longer; for
the kindred are gone that I loved to listen to--they are all slain by
the Romans but you--and you I renounce!'
Deprived of all power of consideration by the violence of the emotions
awakened in his heart by Goisvintha's wild revelations of the evil
passion that consumed her, the young Goth, shuddering throughout his
whole frame, and still averting his face, murmured in hoarse, unsteady
accents: 'Ask of me what you will. I have no words to deny, no power to
rebuke you--ask of me what you will!'
'Promise me,' cried Goisvintha, seizing the hand of Hermanric, and
gazing with a look of fierce triumph on his disordered countenance,
'that this blockade of the city shall not hinder my vengeance! Promise
me that the first victim of our righteous revenge, shall be the first
one that appears before you--whether in war or peace--of the inhabitants
of Rome!'
'I promise,' cried the Goth. And those two words sealed the destiny of
his future life.
During the silence that now ensued between Goisvintha and Hermanric, and
while each stood absorbed in deep meditation, the dark prospect spread
around them began to brighten slowly under a soft, clear light. The
moon, whose dull broad disk had risen among the evening mists arrayed in
gloomy red, had now topped the highest of the exhalations of earth, and
beamed in the wide heaven, adorned once more in her pale, accustomed
hue. Gradually, yet perceptibly, the vapour rolled,--layer by layer,--
from the lofty summits of the palaces of Rome, and the high places of
the mighty city began to dawn, as it were, in the soft, peaceful,
mysterious light; while the lower divisions of the walls, the desolate
suburbs, and parts of the Gothic camp, lay still plunged in the dusky
obscurity of the mist, in grand and gloomy contrast to the prospect of
glowing brightness, that almost appeared to hover about them from above
and around. Patches of ground behind the tent of Hermanric, began to
grow partially visible in raised and open positions; and the song of the
nightingale was now faintly audible at intervals, among the solitary and
distant trees. In whatever direction it was observed, the aspect of
nature gave promise of the cloudless, tranquil night, of the autumnal
climate of ancient Italy.
Hermanric was the first to return to the contemplation of the outward
world. Perceiving that the torch which still burnt by the side of his
tent, had become useless, now that the moon had arisen and dispelled the
mists, he advance and extinguished it; pausing afterwards to look forth
over the plains, as they brightened slowly before him. He had been thus
occupied but a short time, when he thought he discerned a human figure
moving slowly over a spot of partially lightened and hilly ground, at a
short distance from him. It was impossible that this wandering form
could be one of his own people;--they were all collected at their
respective posts, and his tent he knew was on the outermost boundary of
the encampment before the Pincian Gate.
He looked again. The figure still advanced, but at too great a distance
to allow him a chance of discovering, in the uncertain light around him,
either its nation, its sex, or its age. His heart misgave him as he
remembered his promise to Goisvintha, and contemplated the possibility
that it was some miserable slave, abandoned by the fugitives who had
quitted the suburbs in the morning, who now approached as a last
resource, to ask mercy and protection from his enemies in the camp. He
turned towards Goisvintha as the idea crossed his mind, and observed
that she was still occupied in meditation. Assured by the sight, that
she had not yet observed the fugitive figure, he again directed his
attention--with an excess of anxiety which he could hardly account for--
in the direction where he had first beheld it, but it was no more to be
seen. It had either retired to concealment, or was now still advancing
towards his tent through a clump of trees that clothed the descent of
the hill.
Silently and patiently he continued to look forth over the landscape;
and still no living thing was to be seen. At length, just as he began
to doubt whether his senses had not deceived him, the fugitive figure
suddenly appeared from the trees, hurried with wavering gait over the
patch of low, damp ground that still separated it from the young Goth,
gained his tent, and then with a feeble cry fell helplessly upon the
earth at his feet.
That cry, faint as it was, attracted Goisvintha's attention. She turned
in an instant, thrust Hermanric aside, and raised the stranger in her
arms. The light, slender form, the fair hand and arm hanging motionless
towards the ground, the long locks of deep black hair, heavy with the
moisture of the night atmosphere, betrayed the wanderer's sex and age in
an instant. The solitary fugitive was a young girl.
Signing to Hermanric to kindle the extinguished torch at a neighbouring
watch-fire, Goisvintha carried the still insensible girl into the tent.
As the Goth silently proceeded to obey her, a vague, horrid suspicion,
that he shrunk from embodying, passed across his mind. His hand shook
so that he could hardly light the torch, and bold and vigorous as he
was, his limbs trembled beneath him as he slowly returned to the tent.
When he had gained the interior of his temporary abode, the light of his
torch illuminated a strange and impressive scene.
Goisvintha was seated on a rude oaken chest, supporting on her knees the
form of the young girl, and gazing with an expression of the most
intense and enthralling interest upon her pale, wasted countenance. The
tattered robe that had hitherto enveloped the fugitive had fallen back,
and disclosed the white dress, which was the only other garment she
wore. Her face, throat, and arms, had been turned, by exposure to the
cold, to the pure whiteness of marble. Her eyes were closed, and her
small, delicate features were locked in a rigid repose. But for her
deep black hair, which heightened the ghastly aspect of her face, she
might have been mistaken, as she lay in the woman's arms, for an
exquisitely chiseled statue of youth in death!
When the figure of the young warrior, arrayed in his martial
habiliments, and standing near the insensible girl with evident emotions
of wonder and anxiety, was added to the group thus produced,--when
Goisvintha's tall, powerful frame, clothed in dark garments, and bent
over the fragile form and white dress of the fugitive, was illuminated
by the wild, fitful glare of the torch,--when the heightened colour,
worn features, and eager expression of the woman were beheld, here
shadowed, there brightened, in close opposition to the pale, youthful,
reposing countenance of the girl, such an assemblage of violent lights
and deep shades was produced, as gave the whole scene a character at
once mysterious and sublime. It presented an harmonious variety of
solemn colours, united by the exquisite artifice of Nature to a grand,
yet simple disposition of form. It was a picture executed by the hand
of Rembrandt, and imagined by the mind of Raphael.
Starting abruptly from her long, earnest examination of the fugitive,
Goisvintha proceeded to employ herself in restoring animation to her
insensible charge. While thus occupied, she preserved unbroken silence.
A breathless expectation, that absorbed all her senses in one direction,
seemed to have possessed itself of her heart. She laboured at her task
with the mechanical, unwavering energy of those, whose attention is
occupied by their thoughts rather than their actions. Slowly and
unwillingly the first faint flush of returning animation dawned, in the
tenderest delicacy of hue, upon the girl's colourless cheek. Gradually
and softly, her quickening respiration fluttered a thin lock of hair
that had fallen over her face. A little interval more, and then the
closed, peaceful eyes suddenly opened, and glance quickly round the tent
with a wild expression of bewilderment and terror. Then, as Goisvintha
rose, and attempted to place her on a seat, she tore herself from her
grasp, looked on her for a moment with fearful intentness, and then
falling on her knees, murmured, in a plaintive voice,--
'Have mercy upon me. I am forsaken by my father,--I know not why. The
gates of the city are shut against me. My habitation in Rome is closed
to me for ever!'
She had scarcely spoken these few words, before an ominous change
appeared in Goisvintha's countenance. Its former expression of ardent
curiosity changed to a look of malignant triumph. Her eyes fixed
themselves on the girl's upturned face, in glaring, steady, spell-bound
contemplation. She gloated over the helpless creature before her, as
the wild beast gloats over the prey that it has secured. Her form
dilated, a scornful smile appeared on her lips, a hot flush rose on her
cheeks, and ever and anon she whispered softly to herself, 'I knew she
was Roman! Aha! I knew she was Roman!'
During this space of time Hermanric was silent. His breath came short
and thick, his face grew pale, and his glance, after resting for an
instant on the woman and the girl, travelled slowly and anxiously round
the tent. In one corner of it lay a heavy battle-axe. He looked for a
moment from the weapon to Goisvintha, with a vivid expression of horror,
and then moving slowly across the tent, with a firm, yet trembling
grasp, he possessed himself of the arm.
As he looked up, Goisvintha approached him. In one hand she held the
bloody helmet-crest, while she pointed with the other to the crouching
form of the girl. Her lips were still parted with their unnatural
smile, and she whispered softly to the Goth--'Remember your promise!--
remember your kindred!--remember the massacre of Aquileia!'
The young warrior made no answer. He moved rapidly forward a few steps,
and signed hurriedly to the young girl to fly by the door; but her
terror had by this time divested her of all her ordinary powers of
perception and comprehension. She looked up vacantly at Hermanric, and
then shuddering violently, crept into a corner of the tent. During the
short silence that now ensued, the Goth could hear her shiver and sigh,
as he stood watching, with all the anxiety of apprehension, Goisvintha's
darkening brow.
'She is Roman--she is the first dweller in the city who has appeared
before you!--remember your promise!--remember your kindred!--remember
the massacre of Aquileia!' said the woman in fierce, quick, concentrated
tones.
'I remember that I am a warrior and a Goth,' replied Hermanric,
disdainfully. 'I have promised to avenge you, but it must be on a man
that my promise must be fulfilled--an armed man, who can come forth with
weapons in his hand--a strong man of courage whom I will slay in single
combat before your eyes! The girl is too young to die, too weak to be
assailed!'
Not a syllable that he had spoken had passed unheeded by the fugitive,
every word seemed to revive her torpid faculties. As he ceased she
arose, and with the quick instinct of terror, ran up to the side of the
young Goth. Then seizing his hand--the hand that still grasped the
battle-axe--she knelt down and kissed it, uttering hurried broken
ejaculations, as she clasped it to her bosom, which the tremulousness of
her voice rendered completely unintelligible.
'Did the Romans think my children too young to die, or too weak to be
assailed?' cried Goisvintha. 'By the Lord God of Heaven, they murdered
them the more willingly because they were young, and wounded them the
more fiercely because they were weak! My heart leaps within me as I
look on the girl! I am doubly avenged, if I am avenged on the innocent
and the youthful! Her bones shall rot on the plains of Rome, as the
bones of my offspring rot on the plains of Aquileia! Shed me her
blood!--Remember your promise!--Shed me her blood!'
She advanced with extended arms and gleaming eyes towards the fugitive.
She gasped for breath, her face turned suddenly to a livid paleness, the
torchlight fell upon her distorted features, she looked unearthly at
that fearful moment; but the divinity of mercy had now braced the
determination of the young Goth to meet all emergencies. His bright
steady eye quailed not for an instant, as he encountered the frantic
glance of the fury before him. With one hand he barred Goisvintha from
advancing another step; the other, he could not disengage from the girl,
who now clasped and kissed it more eagerly than before.
'You do this but to tempt me to anger,' said Goisvintha, altering her
manner with sudden and palpable cunning, more ominous of peril to the
fugitive than the fury she had hitherto displayed. 'You jest at me,
because I have failed in patience, like a child! But you will shed her
blood--you are honourable and will hold to your promise--you will shed
her blood! And I,' she continued, exultingly, seating herself on the
oaken chest that she had previously occupied, and resting her clenched
hands on her knees; 'I will wait to see it!'
At this moment voices and steps were heard outside the tent. Hermanric
instantly raised the trembling girl from the ground, and supporting her
by his arm, advanced to ascertain the cause of the disturbance. He was
confronted the next instant by an old warrior of superior rank, attached
to the person of Alaric, who was followed by a small party of the
ordinary soldiery of the camp.
'Among the women appointed by the king to the office of tending, for
this night, those sick and wounded on the march, is Goisvintha, sister
of Hermanric. If she is here, let her approach and follow me;' said the
chief of the party in authoritative tones, pausing at the door of the
tent.
Goisvintha rose. For an instant she stood irresolute. To quit
Hermanric at such a time as this, was a sacrifice that wrung her savage
heart;--but she remembered the severity of Alaric's discipline, she saw
the armed men awaiting her, and yielded after a struggle to the
imperious necessity of obedience to the king's commands. Trembling with
suppressed anger and bitter disappointment, she whispered to Hermanric
as she passed him:--
'You cannot save her if you would! You dare not commit her to the
charge of your companions, she is too young and too fair to be abandoned
to their doubtful protection. You cannot escape with her, for you must
remain here on the watch at your post. You will not let her depart by
herself, for you know that she would perish with cold and privation
before the morning rises. When I return on the morrow I shall see her in
the tent. You cannot escape from your promise;--you cannot forget it,--
you must shed her blood!'
'The commands of the king,' said the old warrior, signing to his party
to depart with Goisvintha, who now stood with forced calmness awaiting
their guidance: 'will be communicated to the chieftain Hermanric on the
morrow. Remember,' he continued in a lower tone, pointing
contemptuously to the trembling girl; 'that the vigilance you have shown
in setting the watch before yonder gate, will not excuse any negligence
your prize there may now cause you to commit! Consult your youthful
pleasures as you please, but remember your duties! Farewell!'
Uttering these words in a stern, serious tone, the veteran departed.
Soon the last sound of the footsteps of his escort died away, and
Hermanric and the fugitive were left alone in the tent.
During the address of the old warrior to the chieftain, the girl had
silently detached herself from her protector's support, and retired
hastily to the interior of the tent. When she saw that they were left
together again, she advanced hesitatingly towards the young Goth, and
looked up with an expression of mute inquiry into his face.
'I am very miserable,' said she, after an interval of silence, in soft,
clear, melancholy accents. 'If you forsake me now, I must die--and I
have lived so short a time on the earth, I have known so little
happiness and so little love, that I am not fit to die! But you will
protect me! You are good and brave, strong with weapons in your hands,
and full of pity. You have defended me, and spoken kindly of me--I love
you for the compassion you have shown me.'
Her language and actions, simple as they were, were yet so new to
Hermanric, whose experience of her sex had been almost entirely limited
to the women of his own stern impassive nation, that he could only reply
by a brief assurance of protection, when the suppliant awaited his
answer. A new page in the history of humanity was opening before his
eyes, and he scanned it in wondering silence.
'If that woman should return,' pursued the girl, fixing her dark,
eloquent eyes intently upon the Goth's countenance, 'take me quickly
where she cannot come. My heart grows cold as I look on her! She will
kill me if she can approach me again! My father's anger is very
fearful, but hers is horrible--horrible--horrible! Hush! already I hear
her coming back--let us go--I will follow you wherever you please--but
let us not delay while there is time to depart! She will destroy me if
she sees me now, and I cannot die yet! Oh my preserver, my
compassionate defender, I cannot die yet!'
'No one shall harm you--no on shall approach you to-night--you are
secure from all dangers in this tent,' said the Goth, gazing on her with
undissembled astonishment and admiration.
'I will tell you why death is so dreadful to me,' she continued, and her
voice deepened as she spoke, to tones of mournful solemnity, strangely
impressive in a creature so young. 'I have lived much alone, and have
had no companions but my thoughts, and the sky that I could look up to,
and the things on the earth that I could watch. As I have seen the
clear heaven and the soft fields, and smelt the perfume of flowers, and
heard the voices of singing-birds afar off, I have wondered why the same
God who made all this, and made me, should have made grief and pain and
hell--the dread eternal hell that my father speaks of in his church. I
never looked at the sun-light, or woke from my sleep to look on and to
think of the distant stars, but I longed to love something that might
listen to my joy. But my father forbade me to be happy! He frowned
even when he gave me my flower-garden--though God made flowers. He
destroyed my lute--though God made music. My life has been a longing in
loneliness for the voices of friends! My heart has swelled and trembled
within my, because when I walked in the garden and looked on the plains
and woods and high, bright mountains that were round me, I knew that I
loved them alone! Do you know now why I dare not die? It is because I
must find first the happiness which I feel God has made for me. It is
because I must live to praise this wonderful, beautiful world with
others who enjoy it as I could! It is because my home has been among
those who sigh, and never among those who smile! It is for this that I
fear to die! I must find companions whose prayers are in singing and in
happiness, before I go to the terrible hereafter that all dread. I dare
not die! I dare not die!'
As she uttered these last words she began to weep bitterly. Between
amazement and compassion the young Goth was speechless. He looked down
upon the small, soft hand that she had placed on his arm while she
spoke, and saw that it trembled; he pressed it, and felt that it was
cold; and in the first impulse of pity produced by the action, he found
the readiness of speech which he had hitherto striven for in vain.
'You shiver and look pale,' said he; 'a fire shall be kindled at the
door of the tent. I will bring you garments that will warm you, and
food that will give you strength; you shall sleep, and I will watch that
no one harms you.'
The girl hastily looked up. An expression of ineffable gratitude
overspread her sorrowful countenance. She murmured in a broken voice,
'Oh, how merciful, how merciful you are!' And then, after an evident
struggle with herself, she covered her face with her hands, and again
burst into tears.
More and more embarrassed, Hermanric mechanically busied himself in
procuring from such of his attendants as the necessities of the blockade
left free, the supplies of fire, food and raiment, which he had
promised. She received the coverings, approached the blazing fuel, and
partook of the simple refreshment, which the young warrior offered her,
with eagerness. After that she sat for some time silent, absorbed in
deep meditation, and cowering over the fire, apparently unconscious of
the curiosity with which she was still regarded by the Goth. At length
she suddenly looked up, and observing his eyes fixed on her, arose and
beckoned him to the seat that she occupied.
'Did you know how utterly forsaken I am,' said she, 'you would not
wonder as you do, that I, a stranger and a Roman, have sought you thus.
I have told you how lonely was my home; but yet that home was a refuge
and a protection to me until the morning of this long day that is past,
when I was expelled from it for ever! I was suddenly awakened in my bed
by--my father entered in anger--he called me--'
She hesitated, blushed, and then paused at the very outset of her
narrative. Innocent as she was, the natural instincts of her sex spoke,
though in a mysterious yet in a warning tone, within her heart, abruptly
imposing on her motives for silence that she could neither penetrate nor
explain. She clasped her trembling hands over her bosom as if to repress
its heaving, and casting down her eyes, continued in a lower tone:--
I cannot tell you why my father drove me from his doors. He has always
been silent and sorrowful to me; setting me long tasks in mournful
books; commanding that I should not quit the precincts of his abode, and
forbidding me to speak to him when I have sometimes asked him to tell me
of my mother whom I have lost. Yet he never threatened me or drove me
from his side, until the morning of which I have told you. Then his
wrath was terrible; his eyes were fierce; his voice was threatening! He
bade me begone, and I obeyed him in affright, for I thought he would
have slain me if I stayed! I fled from the house, knowing not where I
went, and ran through yonder gate, which is hard by our abode. As I
entered the suburbs, I met great crowds, all hurrying into Rome. I was
bewildered by my fears and the confusion all around, yet I remember that
they called loudly to me to fly to the city, ere the gates were closed
against the assault of the Goths. And others jostled and scoffed at me,
as they passed by and saw me in the thin night garments in which I was
banished from my home!'
Here she paused and listened intently for a few moments. Every
accidental noise that she heard still awakened in her the apprehension
of Goisvintha's return. Reassured by Hermanric and by her own
observation of all that was passing outside the tent, she resumed her
narrative after an interval, speaking now in a steadier voice.
'I thought my heart would burst within me,' she continued, 'as I tried
to escape them. All things whirled before my eyes. I could not speak--
I could not stop--I could not weep. I fled and fled I knew not whither,
until I sank down exhausted at the door of a small house on the
outskirts of the suburbs. Then I called for aid, but no one was by to
hear me. I crept--for I could stand no longer--into the house. It was
empty. I looked from the windows: no human figure passed through the
silent streets. The roar of a mighty confusion still rose from the
walls of the city, but I was left to listen to it alone. In the house I
saw scattered on the floor some fragments of bread and an old garment.
I took them both, and then rose and departed; for the silence of the
place was horrible to me, and I remembered the fields and the plains
that I had once loved to look on, and I thought that I might find there
the refuge that had been denied to me at Rome! So I set forth once more;
and when I gained the soft grass, and sat down beside the shady trees,
and saw the sunlight brightening over the earth, my heart grew sad, and
I wept as I thought on my loneliness and remembered my father's anger.
'I had not long remained in my resting-place, when I heard a sound of
trumpets in the distance, and looking forth, I saw far off, advancing
over the plains, a mighty multitude with arms that glittered in the sun.
I strove, as I beheld them, to arise and return even to those suburbs
whose solitude had affrighted me. But my limbs failed me. I saw a
little hollow hidden among the trees around. I entered it, and there
throughout the lonely day I lay concealed. I heard the long tramp of
footsteps, as your army passed me on the roads beneath; and then, after
those hours of fear came the weary hours of solitude!
'Oh, those--lonely--lonely--lonely hours! I have lived without
companions, but those hours were more terrible to me than all the years
of my former life! I dared not venture to leave my hiding-place--I
dared not call! Alone in the world, I crouched in my refuge till the
sun went down! Then came the mist, and the darkness, and the cold. The
bitter winds of night thrilled through and through me! The lonely
obscurity around me seemed filled with phantoms whom I could not behold,
who touched me and rustled over the surface of my skin! They half
maddened me! I rose to depart; to meet my wrathful father, or the army
that had passed me, or solitude in the cold, bright meadows--I cared not
which!--when I discerned the light of your torch, the moment ere it was
extinguished. Dark though it then was, I found your tent. And now I
know that I have found yet more--a companion and a friend!'
She looked up at the young Goth as she pronounced these words with the
same grateful expression that had appeared on her countenance before;
but this time her eyes were not by tears. Already her disposition--poor
as was the prospect of happiness which now lay before it--had begun to
return, with an almost infantine facility of change, to the restoring
influences of the brighter emotions. Already the short tranquilities of
the present began to exert for her their effacing charm over the long
agitations of the past. Despair was unnumbered among the emotions that
grew round that child-like heart; shame, fear, and grief, however they
might overshadow it for a time, left no taint of their presence on its
bright, fine surface. Tender, perilously alive to sensation, strangely
retentive of kindness as she was by nature, the very solitude to which
she had been condemned had gifted her, young as she was, with a martyr's
endurance of ill, and with a stoic's patience under pain.
'Do not mourn for me now,' she pursued, gently interrupting some broken
expressions of compassion which fell from the lips of the young Goth.
'If you are merciful to me, I shall forget all that I have suffered!
Though your nation is at enmity with mine, while you remain my friend, I
fear nothing! I can look on your great stature, and heavy sword, and
bright armour now without trembling! You are not like to the soldiers
of Rome;--you are taller, stronger, more gloriously arrayed! You are
like a statue I once saw by chance of a warrior of the Greeks! You have
a look of conquest and a presence of command!'
She gazed on the manly and powerful frame of the young warrior, clothed
as it was in the accoutrements of his warlike nation, with an expression
of childish interest and astonishment, asking him the appellation and
use of each part of his equipment, as it attracted her attention, and
ending her inquiries by eagerly demanding his name.
'Hermanric,' she repeated, as he answered her, pronouncing with some
difficulty the harsh Gothic syllables--'Hermanric!--that is a stern,
solemn name--a name fit for a warrior and a man! Mine sounds worthless,
after such a name as that! It is only Antonina!'
Deeply as he was interested in every word uttered by the girl, Hermanric
could no longer fail to perceive the evident traces of exhaustion that
now appeared in the slightest of her actions. Producing some furs from
a corner of the tent, he made a sort of rude couch by the side of the
fire, heaped fresh fuel on the flames, and then gently counselled her to
recruit her wasted energies by repose. There was something so candid in
his manner, so sincere in the tones of his voice, as he made his simple
offer of hospitality to the stranger who had taken refuge with him, that
the most distrustful woman would have accepted with as little hesitation
as Antonina; who, gratefully and unhesitatingly, laid down on the bed
that he had been spreading for her at her feet.
As soon as he had carefully covered her with a cloak, and rearranged her
couch in the position best calculated to insure her all the warmth of
the burning fuel, Hermanric retired to the other side of the fire; and,
leaning on his sword, abandoned himself to the new and absorbing
reflections which the presence of the girl naturally aroused.
He thought not one the duties demanded of him by the blockade; he
remembered neither the scene of rage and ferocity that had followed his
evasion of his reckless promise; nor the fierce determination that
Goisvintha had expressed as she quitted him for the night. The cares
and toils to come with the new morning, which would oblige him to expose
the fugitive to the malignity of her revengeful enemy; the thousand
contingencies that the difference of their sexes, their nations, and
their lives, might create to oppose the continuance of the permanent
protection that he had promised to her, caused him no forebodings.
Antonina, and Antonina alone, occupied every faculty of his mind, and
every feeling of his heart. There was a softness and a melody to his
ear in her very name!
His early life had made him well acquainted with the Latin tongue, but
he had never discovered all its native smoothness of sound, and elegance
of structure, until he had heard it spoken by Antonina. Word by word,
he passed over in his mind her varied, natural, and happy turns of
expression; recalling, as he was thus employed, the eloquent looks, the
rapid gesticulations, the changing tones which had accompanied those
words, and thinking how wide was the difference between this young
daughter of Rome, and the cold and taciturn women of his own nation.
The very mystery enveloping her story, which would have excited the
suspicion or contempt of more civilised men, aroused in him no other
emotions than those of wonder and compassion. No feelings of a lower
nature than these entered his heart towards the girl. She was safe
under the protection of the enemy and the barbarian, after having been
lost through the interference of the Roman and the senator.
To the simple perceptions of the Goth, the discovery of so much
intelligence united to such extreme youth, of so much beauty doomed to
such utter loneliness, was the discovery of an apparition that dazzled,
and not of a woman who charmed him. He could not even have touched the
hand of the helpless creature, who now reposed under his tent, unless
she had extended it to him of her own accord. He could only think--with
a delight whose excess he was far from estimating himself--on this
solitary mysterious being who had come to him for shelter and for aid;
who had awakened in him already new sources of sensation; and who seemed
to his startled imagination to have suddenly twined herself for ever
about the destinies of his future life.
He was still deep in meditation, when he was startled by a hand suddenly
laid on his arm. He looked up and saw that Antonina, whom he had
imagined to be slumbering on her couch, was standing by his side.
'I cannot sleep,' said the girl in a low, awe-struck voice, 'until I
have asked you to spare my father when you enter Rome. I know that you
are here to ravage the city; and, for aught I can tell, you may assault
and destroy it to-night. Will you promise to warn me before the walls
are assailed? I will then tell you my father's name and abode, and you
will spare him as you have mercifully spared me? He has denied me his
protection, but he is my father still; and I remember that I disobeyed
him once, when I possessed myself of a lute! Will you promise me to
spare him? My mother, whom I have never seen and who must therefore be
dead, may love me in another world for pleading for my father's life!'
In a few words, Hermanric quieted her agitation by explaining to her the
nature and intention of the Gothic blockade, and she silently returned
to the couch. After a short interval, her slow, regular breathing
announced to the young warrior, as he watched by the side of the fire,
that she had at length forgotten the day's heritage of misfortune in the
welcome oblivion of sleep.
CHAPTER 9. THE TWO INTERVIEWS.
The time, is the evening of the first day of the Gothic blockade; the
place, is Vetranio's palace at Rome. In one of the private apartments
of his mansion is seated its all-accomplished owner, released at length
from the long sitting convened by the Senate on the occasion of the
unexpected siege of the city. Although the same complete discipline,
the same elegant regularity, and the same luxurious pomp, which
distinguished the senator's abode in times of security, still prevail
over it in the time of imminent danger which now threatens rich and poor
alike in Rome, Vetranio himself appears far from partaking the
tranquility of his patrician household. His manner displays an unusual
sternness, and his face an unwonted displeasure, as he sits, occupied by
his silent reflections and thoroughly unregardful of whatever occurs
around him. Two ladies who are his companions in the apartment, exert
all their blandishments to win him back to hilarity, but in vain. The
services of his expectant musicians are not put into requisition, the
delicacies on his table remain untouched, and even 'the inestimable
kitten of the breed most worshipped by the ancient Egyptians' gambols
unnoticed and unapplauded at his feet. All its wonted philosophical
equanimity has evidently departed, for the time at least, from the
senator's mind.
Silence--hitherto a stranger to the palace apartments--had reigned
uninterruptedly over them for some time, when the freedman Carrio
dissipated Vetranio's meditations, and put the ladies who were with him
to flight, by announcing in an important voice, that the Prefect
Pompeianus desired a private interview with the Senator Vetranio.
The next instant the chief magistrate of Rome entered the apartment. He
was a short, fat, undignified man. Indolence and vacillation were
legibly impressed on his appearance and expression. You saw, in a
moment, that his mind, like a shuttlecock, might be urged in any
direction by the efforts of others, but was utterly incapable of
volition by itself. But once in his life had the Prefect Pompeianus
been known to arrive unaided at a positive determination, and that was
in deciding a fierce argument between a bishop and a general, regarding
the relative merits of two rival rope-dancers of equal renown.
'I have come, my beloved friend,' said the Prefect in agitated tones,
'to ask your opinion, at this period of awful responsibility for us all,
on the plan of operations proposed by the Senate at the sitting of to-
day! But first,' he hastily continued, perceiving with the unerring
instinct of an old gastronome, that the inviting refreshments on
Vetranio's table had remained untouched, 'permit me to fortify my
exhausted energies by a visit to your ever-luxurious board. Alas, my
friend, when I consider the present fearful scarcity of our provision
stores in the city, and the length of time that this accursed blockade
may be expected to last, I am inclined to think that the gods alone know
(I mean St. Peter) how much longer we may be enabled to give occupation
to our digestions and employment to our cooks.
'I have observed,' pursued the Prefect, after an interval, speaking with
his mouth full of stewed peacock; 'I have observed, oh esteemed
colleague! the melancholy of your manner and your absolute silence
during your attendance to-day at our deliberations. Have we, in your
opinion, decided erroneously? It is not impossible! Our confusion at
this unexpected appearance of the barbarians may have blinded our usual
penetration! If by any chance you dissent from our plans, I beseech you
communicate your objections to me without reserve!'
'I dissent from nothing, because I have heard nothing,' replied Vetranio
sullenly. 'I was so occupied by a private matter of importance during
my attendance at the sitting of the Senate, that I was deaf to their
deliberations. I know that we are besieged by the Goths--why are they
not driven from before the walls?'
'Deaf to our deliberations! Drive the Goths from the walls!' repeated
the Prefect faintly. 'Can you think of any private matter at such a
moment as this? Do you know our danger? Do you know that our friends
are so astonished at this frightful calamity, that they move about like
men half awakened from a dream? Have you not seen the streets filled
with terrified and indignant crowds? Have you not mounted the ramparts
and beheld the innumerable multitudes of pitiless Goths surrounding us
on all sides, intercepting our supplies of provisions from the country,
and menacing us with a speedy famine, unless our hoped-for auxiliaries
arrive from Ravenna?'
'I have neither mounted the ramparts, nor viewed with any attention the
crowds in the streets,' replied Vetranio, carelessly.
'But if you have seen nothing yourself, you must have heard what others
saw,' persisted the Prefect; 'you must know at least that the legions we
have in the city are not sufficient to guard more than half the circuit
of the walls. Has no one informed you that if it should please the
leader of the barbarians to change his blockade into an assault, it is
more than probable that we should be unable to repulse him successfully?
Are you still deaf to our deliberations, when your palace may to-morrow
be burnt over your head, when we may be staved to death, when we may be
doomed to eternal dishonour by being driven to conclude a peace? Deaf
to our deliberations, when such an unimaginable calamity as this
invasion has fallen like a thunderbolt under our very walls! You amaze
me! You overwhelm me! You horrify me!'
And in the excess of his astonishment the bewildered Prefect actually
abandoned his stewed peacock, and advanced, wine-cup in hand, to obtain
a nearer view of the features of his imperturbable host.
'If we are not strong enough to drive the Goths out of Italy,' rejoined
Vetranio coolly, 'you and the Senate know that we are rich enough to
bribe them to depart to the remotest confines of the empire. If we have
not swords enough to fight, we have gold and silver enough to pay.'
'You are jesting! Remember our honour and the auxiliaries we still hope
for from Ravenna,' said the Prefect reprovingly.
'Honour has lost the signification now, that it had in the time of the
Caesars,' retorted the Senator. 'Our fighting days are over. We have
had heroes enough for our reputation. As for the auxiliaries you still
hope for, you will have none! While the Emperor is safe in Ravenna, he
will care nothing for the worst extremities that can be suffered by the
people of Rome.'
'But you forget your duties,' urged the astonished Pompeianus, turning
from rebuke to expostulation. 'You forget that it is a time when all
private interests must be abandoned! You forget that I have come here
to ask your advice, that I am bewildered by a thousand projects, forced
on me from all sides, for ruling the city successfully during the
blockade; that I look to you, as a friend and a man of reputation, to
aid me in deciding on a choice out of the varied counsels submitted to
me in the Senate to-day.'
'Write down the advice of each senator on a separate strip of vellum;
shake all the strips together in an urn; and then, let the first you
take out by chance, be your guide to govern by in the present condition
of the city!' said Vetranio with a sneer.
'Oh friend, friend! it is cruel to jest with me thus!' cried the
Prefect, in tones of lament; 'Would you really persuade me that you are
ignorant that what sentinels we have, are doubled already on the walls?
Would you attempt to declare seriously to me, that you never heard the
project of Saturninus for reducing imperceptibly the diurnal allowance
of provisions? Or the recommendation of Emilianus, that the people
should be kept from thinking on the dangers and extremities which now
threaten them, by being provided incessantly with public amusements at
the theatres and hippodromes? Do you really mean that you are
indifferent to the horrors of our present situation? By the souls of
the Apostles, Vetranio, I begin to think that you do not believe in the
Goths!'
'I have already told you that private affairs occupy me at present, to
the exclusion of public,' said Vetranio impatiently. 'Debate as you
choose--approve what projects you will--I withdraw myself from
interference in your deliberations!'
'This,' murmured the repulsed Prefect in soliloquy, as he mechanically
resumed his place at the refreshment table, 'this is the very end and
climax of all calamities! Now, when advice and assistance are more
precious than jewels in my estimation, I receive neither! I gain from
none, the wise and saving counsels which, as chief magistrate of this
Imperial City, it is my right to demand from all; and the man on whom I
most depended is the man who fails me most! Yet hear me, oh Vetranio,
once again,' he continued, addressing the Senator, 'if our perils beyond
the walls affect you not, there is a weighty matter that has been
settled within them, which must move you. After you had quitted the
Senate, Serena, the widow of Stilicho, was accused, as her husband was
accused before her, of secret and treasonable correspondence with the
Goths; and has been condemned, as her husband was condemned, to suffer
the penalty of death. I myself discerned no evidence to convict her;
but the populace cried out, in universal frenzy, that she was guilty,
that she should die; and that the barbarians, when they heard of the
punishment inflicted on their secret adherent, would retire in dismay
from Rome. This also was a moot point of argument, on which I vainly
endeavoured to decide; but the Senate and the people were wiser than I;
and Serena was condemned to be strangled to-morrow by the public
executioner. She was a woman of good report before this time, and is
the adopted mother of the Emperor. It is now doubted by many whether
Stilicho, her husband, was ever guilty of the correspondence with the
Goths, of which he was accused; and I, on my part, doubt much that
Serena has deserved the punishment of death at our hands. I beseech
you, Vetranio, let me be enlightened by your opinion on this one point
at least!'
The Prefect waited anxiously for an answer, but Vetranio neither looked
at him nor replied. It was evident that the Senator had not listened to
a word that he had said!
This reception of his final appeal for assistance, produced the effect
on the petitioner, which it was perhaps designed to convey--the Prefect
Pompeianus quitted the room in despair.
He had not long departed, when Carrio again entered the apartment, and
addressed his master thus:
'It is grievous for me, revered patron, to disclose it to you, but your
slaves have returned unsuccessful from the search!'
'Give the description of the girl to a fresh division of them, and let
them continue their efforts throughout the night, not only in the
streets, but in all the houses of public entertainment in the city. She
must be in Rome, and she must be found!' said the senator gloomily.
Carrio bowed profoundly, and was about to depart, when he was arrested
at the door by his master's voice.
'If an old man, calling himself Numerian, should desire to see me,' said
Vetranio, 'admit him instantly.'
'She had quitted the room but a short time when I attempted to reclaim
her,' pursued the senator, speaking to himself; 'and yet when I gained
the open air, she was nowhere to be seen! She must have mingled
unintentionally with the crowds whom the Goths drove into the city, and
thus have eluded my observation! So young and so innocent! She must be
found! She must be found!'
He paused, once more engrossed in deep and melancholy thought. After a
long interval, he was roused form his abstraction by the sound of
footsteps on the marble floor. He looked up. The door had been opened
without his perceiving it, and an old man was advancing with slow and
trembling steps towards his silken couch. It was the bereaved and
broken-hearted Numerian.
'Where is she? Is she found?' asked the father, gazing anxiously round
the room, as if he had expected to see his daughter there.
'My slaves still search for her,' said Vetranio, mournfully.
'Ah, woe--woe--woe! How I wronged her! How I wronged her!' cried the
old man, turning to depart.
'Listen to me ere you go,' said Vetranio, gently detaining him. 'I have
done you a great wrong, but I will yet atone for it by finding for you
your child! While there were women who would have triumphed in my
admiration, I should not have attempted to deprive you of your daughter!
Remember when you recover her--and you shall recover her--that from the
time when I first decoyed her into listening to my lute, to the night
when your traitorous servant led me to her bed-chamber, she has been
innocent in this ill-considered matter. I alone have been guilty! She
was scarcely awakened when you discovered her in my arms, and my entry
into her chamber, was as little expected by her, as it was by you. I
was bewildered by the fumes of wine and the astonishment of your sudden
appearance, or I should have rescued her from your anger, ere it was too
late! The events which have passed this morning, confused though they
were, have yet convinced me that I had mistaken you both. I now know
that your child was too pure to be an object fitted for my pursuit; and
I believe that in secluding her as you did, however ill-advised you
might appear, you were honest in your design! Never in my pursuit of
pleasure did I commit so fatal an error, as when I entered the doors of
your house!'
In pronouncing these words, Vetranio but gave expression to the
sentiments by which they were really inspired. As we have before
observed, profligate as he was by thoughtlessness of character and
license of social position, he was neither heartless nor criminal by
nature. Fathers had stormed, but his generosity had hitherto invariably
pacified them. Daughters had wept, but had found consolation on all
previous occasions in the splendour of his palace and the amiability of
his disposition. In attempting, therefore, the abduction of Antonina,
though he had prepared for unusual obstacles, he had expected no worse
results of his new conquest, than those that had followed, as yet, his
gallantries that were past. But, when--in the solitude of his own home,
and in the complete possession of his faculties--he recalled all the
circumstances of his attempt, from the time when he had stolen on the
girl's slumbers, to the moment when she had fled from the house; when he
remembered the stern concentrated anger of Numerian, and the agony and
despair of Antonina; when he thought on the spirit-broken repentance of
the deceived father, and the fatal departure of the injured daughter, he
felt as a man who had not merely committed an indiscretion, but had been
guilty of a crime; he became convinced that he had incurred the fearful
responsibility of destroying the happiness of a parent who was really
virtuous, and a child who was truly innocent. To a man, the business of
whose whole life was to procure for himself a heritage of unalloyed
pleasure, whose sole occupation was to pamper that refined sensuality
which the habits of a life had made the very material of his heart, by
diffusing luxury and awakening smiles wherever he turned his steps, the
mere mental disquietude attending the ill-success of his intrusion into
Numerian's dwelling, was as painful in its influence, as the bitterest
remorse that could have afflicted a more highly-principled mind. He
now, therefore, instituted the search after Antonina, and expressed his
contrition to her father, from a genuine persuasion that nothing but the
completest atonement for the error he had committed, could restore to
him that luxurious tranquility, the loss of which had, as he had himself
expressed it, rendered him deaf to the deliberations of the Senate, and
regardless of the invasion of the Goths.
'Tell me,' he continued, after a pause, 'whither has Ulpius betaken
himself? It is necessary that he should be discovered. He may
enlighten us upon the place of Antonina's retreat. He shall be secured
and questioned.'
'He left me suddenly; I saw him as I stood at the window, mix with the
multitude in the street, but I know not whither he is gone,' replied
Numerian; and a tremor passed over his whole frame as he spoke of the
remorseless Pagan.
Again there was a short silence. The grief of the broken-spirited
father, possessed in its humility and despair, a voice of rebuke, before
which the senator, careless and profligate as he was, instinctively
quailed. For some time he endeavoured in vain to combat the silencing
and reproving influence, exerted over him by the very presence of the
sorrowing man whom he had so fatally wronged. At length, after an
interval, he recovered self-possession enough to address to Numerian
some further expressions of consolation and hope; but he spoke to ears
that listened not. The father had relapsed into his mournful
abstraction; and when the senator paused, he merely muttered to
himself--'She is lost! Alas, she is lost for ever!'
'No, she is not lost for ever,' cried Vetranio, warmly. 'I have wealth
and power enough to cause her to be sought for to the ends of the earth!
Ulpius shall be secured and questioned--imprisoned, tortured, if it is
necessary. Your daughter shall be recovered. Nothing is impossible to
a senator of Rome!'
'I knew not that I loved her, until the morning when I wronged and
banished her!' continued the old man, still speaking to himself. 'I
have lost all traces of my parents and my brother--my wife is parted
from me for ever--I have nothing left but Antonina; and now too she is
gone! Even my ambition, that I once thought my all in all, is no
comfort to my soul; for I loved it--alas! unconsciously loved it--
through the being of my child! I destroyed her lute--I thought her
shameless--I drove her from my doors! Oh, how I wronged her!--how I
wronged her!'
'Remain here, and repose yourself in one of the sleeping apartments,
until my slaves return in the morning. You will then hear without delay
of the result of their search to-night,' said Vetranio, in kindly and
compassionate tones.
'It grows dark--dark!' groaned the father, tottering towards the door;
'but that is nothing; daylight itself now looks darkness to me! I must
go: I have duties at the chapel to perform. Night is repose for you--
for me, it is tribulation and prayer!'
He departed as he spoke. Slowly he paced along the streets that led to
his chapel, glancing with penetrating eye at each inhabitant of the
besieged city who passed him on his way. With some difficulty he
arrived at his destination; for Rome was still thronged with armed men
hurrying backwards and forwards, and with crowds of disorderly citizens
pouring forth, wherever there was space enough for them to assemble.
The report of the affliction that had befallen him had already gone
abroad among his hearers, and they whispered anxiously to each other as
he entered the plain, dimly-lighted chapel, and slowly mounted the
pulpit to open the service, by reading the chapter in the Bible which
had been appointed for perusal that night, and which happened to be the
fifth of the Gospel of St. Mark. His voice trembled, his face was
ghastly pale, and his hands shook perceptibly as he began; but he read
on, in low, broken tones, and with evident pain and difficulty, until he
came to the verse containing these words: 'My little daughter lieth at
the point of death.' Here he stopped suddenly, endeavoured vainly for a
few minutes to proceed, and then, covering his face with his hands, sank
down in the pulpit and sobbed aloud. His sorrowing and startled audience
immediately gathered round him, raised him in their arms, and prepared
to conduct him to his own abode. When, however, they had gained the
door of the chapel, he desired them gently, to leave him and return to
the performance of the service among themselves. Ever implicitly
obedient to his slightest wishes, the persons of his little assembly,
moved to tears by the sight of their teacher's suffering, obeyed him, by
retiring silently to their former places. As soon as he found that he
was alone, he passed the door; and whispering to himself, 'I must join
those who seek her! I must aid them myself in the search!'--he mingled
once more with the disorderly citizens who thronged the darkened
streets.
CHAPTER 10. THE RIFT IN THE WALL.
When Ulpius suddenly departed from Numerian's house on the morning of
the siege, it was with no distinct intention of betaking himself to any
particular place, or devoting himself to any immediate employment. It
was to give vent to his joy--to the ecstacy that now filled his heart to
bursting--that he sought the open streets. His whole moral being was
exalted by that overwhelming sense of triumph, which urges the physical
nature into action. He hurried into the free air, as a child runs on a
bright day in the wide fields; his delight was too wild to expand under
a roof; his excess of bliss swelled irrepressibly beyond all artificial
limits of space.
The Goths were in sight! A few hours more, and their scaling ladders
would be planted against the walls. On a city so weakly guarded as
Rome, their assault must be almost instantaneously successful.
Thirsting for plunder, they would descend in infuriated multitudes on
the defenceless streets. Christians though they were, the restraints of
religion would, in that moment of fierce triumph, be powerless with such
a nation of marauders against the temptations to pillage. Churches
would be ravaged and destroyed; priests would be murdered in attempting
the defence of their ecclesiastical treasures; fire and sword would
waste to its remotest confines the stronghold of Christianity, and
overwhelm in death and oblivion the boldest of Christianity's devotees!
Then, when the hurricane of ruin and crime had passed over the city,
when a new people were ripe for another government and another
religion--then would be the time to invest the banished gods of old Rome
with their former rule; to bid the survivors of the stricken multitude
remember the judgment that their apostacy to their ancient faith had
demanded and incurred; to strike the very remembrance of the Cross out
of the memory of man; and to reinstate Paganism on her throne of
sacrifices, and under her roof of gold, more powerful from her past
persecutions; more universal in her sudden restoration, than in all the
glories of her ancient rule!
Such thoughts as these passed through the Pagan's toiling mind as,
unobservant of all outward events, he paced through the streets of the
beleaguered city. Already he beheld the array of the Goths preparing
the way, as the unconscious pioneers of the returning gods, for the
march of that mighty revolution which he was determined to lead. The
warmth of his past eloquence, the glow of his old courage, thrilled
through his heart, as he figured to himself the prospect that would soon
stretch before him--a city laid waste, a people terrified, a government
distracted, a religion destroyed. Then, arising amid this darkness and
ruin; amid this solitude, desolation, and decay, it would be his
glorious privilege to summon an unfaithful people to return to the
mistress of their ancient love; to rise from prostration beneath a
dismantled Church; and to seek prosperity in temples repeopled and at
shrines restored!
All remembrance of late events now entirely vanished from his mind.
Numerian, Vetranio, Antonina, they were all forgotten in this memorable
advent of the Goths! His slavery in the mines, his last visit to
Alexandria, his earlier wanderings--even these, so present to his memory
until the morning of the siege, were swept from its very surface now.
Age, solitude, infirmity--hitherto the mournful sensations which were
proofs to him that he still continued to exist--suddenly vanished from
his perceptions, as things that were not; and now at length he forgot
that he was an outcast, and remembered triumphantly that he was still a
priest. He felt animated by the same hopes, elevated by the same
aspirations, as in those early days when he had harangued the wavering
Pagans in the Temple, and first plotted the overthrow of the Christian
Church.
It was a terrible and warning proof of the omnipotent influence that a
single idea may exercise over a whole life, to see that old man
wandering among the crowds around him, still enslaved, after years of
suffering and solitude, degradation, and crime, by the same ruling
ambition, which had crushed the promise of his early youth! It was an
awful testimony to the eternal and mysterious nature of thought, to
behold that wasted and weakened frame; and then to observe how the
unassailable mind within still swayed the wreck of body yet left to it--
how faithfully the last exhausted resources of failing vigour rallied
into action at its fierce command--how quickly, at its mocking voice,
the sunken eye lightened again with a gleam of hope, and the pale, thin
lips parted mechanically with an exulting smile!
The hours passed, but he still walked on--whither or among whom he
neither knew nor cared. No remorse touched his heart for the
destruction that he had wreaked on the Christian who had sheltered him;
no terror appalled his soul at the contemplation of the miseries that he
believed to be in preparation for the city from the enemy at its gates.
The end that had hallowed to him the long series of his former offences
and former sufferings, now obliterated iniquities just passed, and
stripped of all their horrors, atrocities immediately to come.
The Goths might be destroyers to others, but they were benefactors to
him; for they were harbingers of the ruin which would be the material of
his reform, and the source of his triumph. It never entered his
imagination that, as an inhabitant of Rome, he shared the approaching
perils of the citizens, and in the moment of the assault might share
their doom. He beheld only the new and gorgeous prospect that war and
rapine were opening before him. He thought only of the time that must
elapse ere his new efforts could be commenced--of the orders of the
people among whom he should successively make his voice heard--of the
temples which he should select for restoration--of the quarter of Rome
which should first be chosen for the reception of his daring reform.
At length he paused; his exhausted energies yielded under the exertions
imposed on them, and obliged him to bethink himself of refreshment and
repose. It was now noon. The course of his wanderings had insensibly
conducted him again to the precincts of his old, familiar dwelling-
place; he found himself at the back of the Pincian Mount, and only
separated by a strip of uneven woody ground, from the base of the city
wall. The place was very solitary. It was divided from the streets and
mansions above by thick groves and extensive gardens, which stretched
along the undulating descent of the hill. A short distance to the
westward lay the Pincian Gate, but an abrupt turn in the wall and some
olive trees which grew near it, shut out all view of objects in that
direction. On the other side, towards the eastward, the ramparts were
discernible, running in a straight line of some length, until they
suddenly turned inwards at a right angle and were concealed from further
observation by the walls of a distant palace and the pine trees of a
public garden. The only living figure discernible near this lonely
spot, was that of a sentinel, who occasionally passed over the ramparts
above, which--situated as they were between two stations of soldiery,
one at the Pincian Gate and the other where the wall made the angle
already described--were untenanted, save by the guard within the limits
of whose watch they happened to be placed. Here, for a short space of
time, the Pagan rested his weary frame, and aroused himself insensibly
from the enthralling meditations which had hitherto blinded him to the
troubled aspect of the world around him.
He now for the first time heard on all sides distinctly, the confused
noises which still rose from every quarter of Rome. The same incessant
strife of struggling voices and hurrying footsteps, which had caught his
ear in the early morning, attracted his attention now; but no shrieks of
distress, no clash of weapons, no shouts of fury and defiance, were
mingled with them; although, as he perceived by the position of the sun,
the day had sufficiently advanced to have brought the Gothic army long
since to the foot of the walls. What could be the cause of this delay
in the assault; of this ominous tranquillity on the ramparts above him?
Had the impetuosity of the Goths suddenly vanished at the sight of Rome?
Had negotiations for peace been organised with the first appearance of
the invaders? He listened again. No sounds caught his ear differing in
character from those he had just heard. Though besieged, the city was
evidently--from some mysterious cause--not even threatened by an
assault.
Suddenly there appeared from a little pathway near him, which led round
the base of the wall, a woman preceded by a child, who called to her
impatiently, as he ran on, 'Hasten, mother, hasten! There is no crowd
here. Yonder is the Gate. We shall have a noble view of the Goths!'
There was something in the address of the child to the woman that gave
Ulpius a suspicion, even then, of the discovery that flushed upon him
soon after. He rose and followed them. They passed onward by the wall,
through the olive trees beyond, and then gained the open space before
the Pincian Gate. Here a great concourse of people had assembled, and
were suffered, in their proper turn, to ascend the ramparts in
divisions, by some soldiers who guarded the steps by which they were
approached. After a short delay, Ulpius and those around him were
permitted to gratify their curiosity, as others had done before them.
They mounted the walls, and beheld, stretched over the ground within and
beyond the suburbs, the vast circumference of the Gothic lines.
Terrible and almost sublime as was the prospect of that immense
multitude, seen under the brilliant illumination of the noontide sun, it
was not impressive enough to silence the turbulent loquacity rooted in
the dispositions of the people of Rome. Men, women, and children, all
made their noisy and conflicting observations on the sight before them,
in every variety of tone, from the tremulous accents of terror, to the
loud vociferations of bravado.
Some spoke boastfully of the achievements that would be performed by the
Romans, when their expected auxiliaries arrived from Ravenna. Others
foreboded, in undissembled terror, an assault under cover of the night.
Here, a group abused, in low confidential tones, the policy of the
government in its relations with the Goths. There, a company of ragged
vagabonds amused themselves by pompously confiding to each other their
positive conviction, that at that very moment the barbarians must be
trembling in their camp, at the mere sight of the all-powerful Capital
of the World. In one direction, people were heard noisily speculating
whether the Goths would be driven from the walls by the soldiers of
Rome, or be honoured by an invitation to conclude a peace with the
august Empire, which they had so treasonably ventured to invade. In
another, the more sober and reputable among the spectators audibly
expressed their apprehensions of starvation, dishonour, and defeat,
should the authorities of the city be foolhardy enough to venture a
resistance to Alaric and his barbarian hosts. But wide as was the
difference of the particular opinions hazarded among the citizens, they
all agreed in one unavoidable conviction, that Rome had escaped the
immediate horrors of an assault, to be threatened--if unaided by the
legions at Ravenna--by the prospective miseries of a blockade.
Amid the confusion of voices around him, that word 'blockade' alone
reached the Pagan's ear. It brought with it a flood of emotions that
overwhelmed him. All that he saw, all that he heard, connected itself
imperceptibly with that expression. a sudden darkness, neither to be
dissipated nor escaped, seemed to obscure his faculties in an instant.
He struggled mechanically through the crowd, descended the steps of the
ramparts, and returned to the solitary spot where he had first beheld
the woman and the child.
The city was blockaded! The Goths were bent then, on obtaining a peace
and not on achieving a conquest! The city was blockaded! It was no
error of the ignorant multitude--he had seen with his own eyes the tents
and positions of the enemy, he had heard the soldiers on the wall
discoursing on the admirable disposition of Alaric's forces, on the
impossibility of obtaining the smallest communication with the
surrounding country, on the vigilant watch that had been set over the
navigation of the Tiber. There was no doubt on the matter--the
barbarians had determined on a blockade!
There was even less uncertainty upon the results which would be produced
by this unimaginable policy of the Goths--the city would be saved! Rome
had not scrupled in former years to purchase the withdrawal of all
enemies from her distant provinces; and now that the very centre of her
glory, the very pinnacle of her declining power, was threatened with
sudden and unexpected ruin, she would lavish on the Goths the treasures
of the whole empire, to bribe them to peace and to tempt them to
retreat. The Senate might possibly delay the necessary concessions,
from hopes of assistance that would never be realised; but sooner or
later the hour of negotiation would arrive; northern rapacity would be
satisfied with southern wealth; and in the very moment when it seemed
inevitable, the ruin from which the Pagan revolution was to derive its
vigorous source, would be diverted from the churches of Rome.
Could the old renown of the Roman name have retained so much of its
ancient influence as to daunt the hardy Goths, after they had so
successfully penetrated the empire as to have reached the walls of its
vaunted capital? Could Alaric have conceived so exaggerated an idea of
the strength of the forces in the city as to despair, with all his
multitudes, of storming it with success? It could not be otherwise! No
other consideration could have induced the barbarian general to abandon
such an achievement as the destruction of Rome. With the chance of an
assault the prospects of Paganism had brightened--with the certainty of
a blockade, they sunk immediately into disheartening gloom!
Filled with these thoughts, Ulpius paced backwards and forwards in his
solitary retreat, utterly abandoned by the exaltation of feeling which
had restored to his faculties in the morning, the long-lost vigour of
their former youth. Once more, he experienced the infirmities of his
age; once more he remembered the miseries that had made his existence
one unending martyrdom; once more he felt the presence of his ambition
within him, like a judgment that he was doomed to welcome, like a curse
that he was created to cherish. To say that his sensations at this
moment were those of the culprit who hears the order for his execution
when he had been assured of a reprieve, is to convey but a faint idea of
the fierce emotions of rage, grief, and despair, that now united to rend
the Pagan's heart.
Overpowered with weariness both of body and mind, he flung himself down
under the shade of some bushes that clothed the base of the wall above
him. As he lay there--so still in his heavy lassitude that life itself
seemed to have left him--one of the long green lizards, common to Italy,
crawled over his shoulder. He seized the animal--doubtful for the
moment whether it might not be of the poisonous species--and examined
it. At the first glance he discovered that it was of the harmless order
of its race, and would have flung it carelessly from him, but for
something in its appearance which, in the wayward irritability of his
present mood, he felt a strange and sudden pleasure in contemplating.
Through its exquisitely marked and transparent skin he could perceive
the action of the creature's heart, and saw that it was beating
violently, in the agony of fear caused to the animal by its imprisonment
in his hand. As he looked on it, and thought how continually a being so
timid must be thwarted in its humble anxieties, in its small efforts, in
its little journeys from one patch of grass to another, by a hundred
obstacles, which, trifles though they might be to animals of a higher
species, were yet of fatal importance to creatures constituted like
itself, he began to find an imperfect, yet remarkable analogy between
his own destiny and that of this small unit of creation. He felt that,
in its petty sphere, the short life of the humble animal before him must
have been the prey of crosses and disappointments, as serious to it, as
the more severed and destructive afflictions of which he, in his
existence, had been the victim; and, as he watched the shadow-like
movement of the little fluttering heart of the lizard, he experienced a
cruel pleasure in perceiving that there were other beings in the
creation, even down to the most insignificant, who inherited a part of
his misery, and suffered a portion of his despair.
Ere long, however, his emotions took a sterner and a darker hue. The
sight of the animal wearied him, and he flung it contemptuously aside.
It disappeared in the direction of the ramparts; and almost at the same
moment he heard a slight sound, resembling the falling of several minute
particles of brick or light stone, which seemed to come from the wall
behind him.
That such a noise should proceed from so massive a structure appeared
unaccountable. He rose, and, parting the bushes before him, advanced
close to the surface of the lofty wall. To his astonishment, he found
that the brickwork had in many places so completely mouldered away, that
he could move it easily with his fingers. The cause of the trifling
noise that he had heard was now fully explained: hundreds of lizards
had made their homes between the fissures of the bricks; the animal that
he had permitted to escape had taken refuge in one of these cavities,
and in the hurry of its flight had detached several of the loose
crumbling fragments that surrounded its hiding-place.
No content, however, with the discovery he had already made, he retired
a little, and, looking stedfastly up through some trees which in this
particular place grew at the foot of the wall, he saw that its surface
was pierced in many places by great irregular rifts, some of which
extended nearly to its whole height. In addition to this, he perceived
that the mass of the structure at one particular point, leaned
considerably out of the perpendicular. Astounded at what he beheld, he
took a stick from the ground, and inserting it in one of the lowest and
smallest of the cracks, easily succeeded in forcing it entirely into the
wall, part of which seemed to be hollow, and part composed of the same
rotten brickwork which had at first attracted his attention.
It was now evident that the whole structure, over a breadth of several
yards, had been either weakly and carelessly built, or had at some
former period suffered a sudden and violent shock. He left the stick in
the wall to mark the place; and was about to retire, when he heard the
footstep of the sentinel on the rampart immediately above. Suddenly
cautious, though from what motive he would have been at that moment
hardly able to explain, he remained in the concealment of the trees and
bushes, until the guard had passed onward; then he cautiously emerged
from the place; and, retiring to some distance, fell into a train of
earnest and absorbing thought.
To account to the reader for the phenomenon which now engrossed the
Pagan's attention, it will be necessary to make a brief digression to
the history of the walls of Rome.
The circumference of the first fortifications of the city, built by
Romulus, was thirteen miles. The greater part, however, of this large
area was occupied by fields and gardens, which it was the object of the
founder of the empire to preserve for arable purposes, from the
incursions of the different enemies by whom he was threatened from
without. As Rome gradually increased in size, its walls were
progressively enlarged and altered by subsequent rulers. But it was not
until the reign of the Emperor Aurelian (A.D. 270), that any
extraordinary or important change was effected in the defences of the
city. That potentate commenced the erection of walls, twenty-one miles
in circumference, which were finally completed in the reign of Probus
(A.D. 276), were restored by Belisarius (A.D. 537), and are to be seen
in detached portions, in the fortifications of the modern city, to the
present day.
At the date of our story, then (A.D. 408), the walls remained precisely
as they had been constructed in the reigns of Aurelian and Probus. They
were for the most part made of brick; and in a few places, probably, a
sort of soft sandstone might have been added to the pervading material.
At several points in their circumference, and particularly in the part
behind the Pincian Hill, these walls were built in arches, forming deep
recesses, and occasionally disposed in double rows. The method of
building employed in their erection, was generally that mentioned by
Vitruvius, in whose time it originated, as 'opus reticulatum'.
The 'opus reticulatum' was composed of small bricks (or stones) set
together on their angles, instead of horizontally, and giving the
surface of a wall the appearance of a sort of solid network. This was
considered by some architects of antiquity a perishable mode of
construction; and Vitruvius asserts that some buildings where he had
seen it used, had fallen down. From the imperfect specimens of it which
remain in modern times, it would be difficult to decide upon its merits.
That it was assuredly insufficient to support the weight of the bank of
the Pincian Mount, which rose immediately behind it, in the solitary
spot described some pages back, is still made evident by the appearance
of the wall at that part of the city, which remains in modern times bent
out of the perpendicular, and cracked in some places almost from top to
bottom. This ruin is now known to the present race of Italians, under
the expressive title of 'Il Muro Torto' or, The Crooked Wall.
We may here observe that it is extremely improbable that the existence
of this natural breach in the fortifications of Rome was noticed, or if
noticed, regarded with the slightest anxiety or attention by the
majority of the careless and indolent inhabitants, at the period of the
present romance. It is supposed to have been visible as early as the
time of Aurelian, but is only particularly mentioned by Procopius, an
historian of the sixth century, who relates that Belisarius, in
strengthening the city against a siege of the Goths, attempted to repair
this weak point in the wall, but was hindered in his intended labour by
the devout populace, who declared that it was under the peculiar
protection of St. Peter, and that it would be consequently impious to
meddle with it. The general submitted without remonstrance to the
decision of the inhabitants, and found no cause afterwards to repent of
his facility of compliance; for, to use the translated words of the
writer above-mentioned, 'During the siege neither the enemy nor the
Romans regarded this place.' It is to be supposed that so extraordinary
an event as this, gave the wall that sacred character, which deterred
subsequent rulers from attempting its repair; which permitted it to
remain crooked and rent through the convulsions of the middle ages; and
which still preserves it, to attest the veracity of historians, by
appealing to the antiquarian curiosity of the traveller of modern times.
We now return to Ulpius. It is a peculiarity observable in the
characters of men living under the ascendancy of one ruling idea, that
they intuitively distort whatever attracts their attention in the outer
world, into a connection more or less intimate with the single object of
their mental contemplation. since the time when he had been exiled from
the Temple, the Pagan's faculties had, unconsciously to himself, acted
solely in reference to the daring design which it was the business of
his whole existence to entertain. Influenced, therefore, by this
obliquity of moral feeling, he had scarcely reflected on the discovery
that he had just made at the base of the city wall, ere his mind
instantly reverted to the ambitious meditations which had occupied it in
the morning; and the next moment, the first dawning conception of a bold
and perilous project began to absorb his restless thoughts.
He reflected on the peculiarities and position of the wall before him.
Although the widest and most important of the rents which he had
observed in it, existed too near the rampart to be reached without the
assistance of a ladder, there were others as low as the ground, which he
knew, by the result of the trial he had already made, might be
successfully and immensely widened by the most ordinary exertion and
perseverance. The interior of the wall, if judged by the condition of
the surface, could offer no insuperable obstacles to an attempt at
penetration so partial as to be limited to a height and width of a few
feet. The ramparts, from their position between two guard-houses, would
be unencumbered by an inquisitive populace. The sentinel, within the
limits of whose allotted watch it happened to fall, would, when night
came on, be the only human being likely to pass the spot; and at such an
hour his attention must necessarily be fixed--in the circumstances under
which the city was now placed--on the prospect beyond, rather than on
the ground below and behind him. It seemed, therefore, almost a matter
of certainty, that a cautious man, labouring under cover of the night,
might pursue whatever investigations he pleased at the base of the wall.
He examined the ground where he now stood. Nothing could be more lonely
than its present appearance. The private gardens on the hill above it
shut out all communication from that quarter. It could only be
approached by the foot-path that ran round the Pincian Mount, and along
the base of the walls. In the state of affairs now existing in the
city, it was not probable that any one would seek this solitary place,
whence nothing could be seen, and where little could be heard, in
preference to mixing with the spirit-stirring confusion in the streets,
or observing the Gothic encampment from such positions on the ramparts
as were easily attainable to all. In addition to the secresy offered by
the loneliness of this patch of ground to whatever employments were
undertaken on it, was the further advantage afforded by the trees and
thickets which covered its lower end, and which would effectually screen
an intruder, during the darkness of night, from the most penetrating
observation directed from the wall above.
Reflecting thus, he doubted not that a cunning and determined man might
with impunity so far widen any one of the inferior breaches in the lower
part of the wall as to make a cavity (large enough to admit a human
figure) that should pierce to its outer surface, and afford that liberty
of departing from the city and penetrating the Gothic camp which the
closed gates now denied to all the inhabitants alike. To discover the
practicability of such an attempt as this was, to a mind filled with
such aspirations as the Pagan's, to determine irrevocably on its
immediate execution. He resolved as soon as night approached to begin
his labours on the wall; to seek--if the breach were made good, and the
darkness favoured him--the tent of Alaric; and once arrived there, to
acquaint the Gothic King with the weakness of the materials for defence
within the city, and dilapidated condition of the fortifications below
the Pincian Mount, insisting, as the condition of his treachery, on an
assurance from the barbarian leader (which he doubted not would be
gladly and instantly accorded) of the destruction of the Christian
churches, the pillage of the Christian possessions, and the massacre of
the Christian priests.
He retired cautiously from the lonely place that had now become the
centre of his new hopes; and entering the streets of the city, proceeded
to provide himself with an instrument that would facilitate his
approaching labours, and food that would give him strength to prosecute
his intended efforts, unthreatened by the hindrance of fatigue. As he
thought on the daring treachery of his project, his morning's exultation
began to return to him again. All his previous attempts to organise the
restoration of Paganism sunk into sudden insignificance before his
present design. His defence of the Temple of Serapis, his conspiracy at
Alexandria, his intrigue with Vetranio, were the efforts of a man; but
this projected destruction of the priests, the churches, and the
treasures of a whole city, through the agency of a mighty army, moved by
the unaided machinations of a single individual, would be the dazzling
achievement of a god!
The hours loitered slowly onward. The sun waned in the gorgeous heaven,
and set, surrounded by red and murky clouds. Then came silence and
darkness. The Gothic watch-fires flamed one by one into the dusky air.
The guards were doubled at the different posts. The populace were
driven from the ramparts, and the fortifications of the great city
echoed to no sound now but the tramp of the restless sentinel, or the
clash of arms from the distant guard-houses that dotted the long line of
the lofty walls.
It was then that Ulpius, passing cautiously along the least-frequented
streets, gained unnoticed the place of his destination. A thick vapour
lay over the lonely and marshy spot. Nothing was now visible from it
but the dim, uncertain outline of the palaces above, and the mass, so
sunk in obscurity that it looked like a dark layer of mist itself, of
the rifted fortifications. A smile of exultation passed over the
Pagan's countenance, as he perceived the shrouding and welcome thickness
of the atmosphere. Groping his way softly through the thickets, he
arrived at the base of the wall. For some time he passed slowly along
it, feeling the width of the different rents wherever he could stretch
his hand. At length he paused at one more extensive than the rest, drew
from its concealment in his garments a thick bar of iron sharpened at
one end, and began to labour at the breach.
Chance had led him to the place best adapted to his purpose. The ground
he stood on was only encumbered close to the wall by rank weeds and low
thickets, and was principally composed of damp, soft turf. The bricks,
therefore, as he carefully detached them, made no greater noise in
falling than the slight rustling caused by their sudden contact with the
boughs through which they descended. Insignificant as this sound was,
it aroused the apprehension of the wary Pagan. He laid down his iron
bar, and removed the thickets by dragging them up, or breaking them at
the roots, until he had cleared a space of some feet in extent before
the base of the wall. He then returned to his toilsome task, and with
hands bleeding from the wounds inflicted by the thorns he had grasped in
removing the thickets continued his labour at the brick-work. He
pursued his employment with perfect impunity; the darkness covered him
from observation; no one disturbed him by approaching the solitary scene
of his operations; and of the two sentinels who were placed near the
part of the wall which was the centre of all his exertions, one remained
motionless at the most distant extremity of his post, and the other
paced restlessly backwards and forwards on the rampart, singing a wild,
rambling son about war, and women, and wine, which, whatever liberty it
might allow to his organs of perception, effectually hindered the
vigilant exercise of his faculties of hearing.
Brick after brick yielded to the vigorous and well-timed efforts of
Ulpius. He had already made a cavity, in an oblique direction, large
enough to creep through, and was preparing to penetrate still further,
when a portion of the rotten material of the interior of the wall
suddenly yielded in a mass to a chance pressure of his iron bar, and
slowly sunk down inwards into a bed which, judging by such faint sounds
as were audible at the moment, must have been partly water, and partly
marshy earth and rotten brick-work. After having first listened, to be
sure that the slight noise caused by this event had not reached the ears
or excited the suspicions of the careless sentinels, Ulpius crept into
the cavity he had made, groping his way with his bar, until he reached
the brink of a chasm, the depth of which he could not probe, and the
breadth of which he could not ascertain.
He lingered irresolute; the darkness around him was impenetrable; he
could feel toads and noisome animals crawling over his limbs. The damp
atmosphere of the place began to thrill through him to his very bones;
his whole frame trembled under the excess of his past exertions. Without
light, he could neither attempt to proceed, nor hope to discover the
size and extent of the chasm which he had partially laid open. The mist
was fast vanishing as the night advanced: it was necessary to arrive at
a resolution ere it would be too late.
He crept out of the cavity. Just as he had gained the open air, the
sentinel halted over the very spot where the Pagan stood, and paused
suddenly in his song. There was an instant's interval of silence,
during which the inmost soul of Ulpius quailed beneath an apprehension
as vivid, as that which had throbbed in the heart of the despised
lizard, whose flight had guided him to his discovery at the wall. Soon,
however, he heard the voice of the soldier calling cheerfully to his
fellow sentinel, 'Comrade, do you see the moon? She is rising to cheer
our watch!'
Nothing had been discovered!--he was still safe! But if he stayed at
the cavity till the mists faded before the moonlight, could he be
certain of preserving his security? He felt that he could not!
What mattered a night more or a night less, to such a project as his?
Months might elapse before the Goths retired from the walls. It was
better to suffer delay than to risk discovery. He determined to leave
the place, and to return on the following night provided with a lantern,
the light of which he would conceal until he entered the cavity. Once
there, it could not be perceived by the sentinels above--it would guide
him through all obstacles, preserve him through all dangers. Massive as
it was, he felt convinced that the interior of the wall was in as
ruinous a condition as the outside. Caution and perseverance were
sufficient of themselves to insure to his efforts the speediest and
completest success.
He waited until the sentinel had again betaken himself to the furthest
limits of his watch, and then softly gathering up the brushwood that lay
round him, he concealed with it the mouth of the cavity in the outer
wall, and the fragments of brick-work that had fallen on the turf
beneath. This done, he again listened, to assure himself that he had
been unobserved; then, stepping with the utmost caution, he departed by
the path that led round the slope of the Pincian Hill.
'Strength--patience--and to-morrow night!' muttered the Pagan to
himself, as he entered the streets, and congregated once more with the
citizens of Rome.
CHAPTER 11. GOISVINTHA'S RETURN.
It was morning. The sun had risen, but his beams were partially
obscured by thick heavy clouds, which scowled already over the
struggling brightness of the eastern horizon. The bustle and animation
of the new day gradually overspread the Gothic encampment in all
directions. The only tent whose curtain remained still closed, and
round which no busy crowds congregated in discussion or mingled in
labour, was that of Hermanric. By the dying embers of his watchfire
stood the young chieftain, with two warriors, to whom he appeared to be
giving some hurried directions. His countenance expressed emotions of
anxiety and discontent, which, though partially repressed while he was
in the presence of his companions, became thoroughly visible, not only
in his features, but in his manner, when they left him to watch alone
before his tent.
For some time he walked regularly backwards and forwards, looking
anxiously down the westward lines of the encampment, and occasionally
whispering to himself a hasty exclamation of doubt and impatience. With
the first breath of the new morning, the delighting meditations which
had occupied him by his watchfire during the darkness of the night had
begun to subside. And now, as the hour of her expected return gradually
approached, the image of Goisvintha banished from his mind whatever
remained of those peaceful and happy contemplation in which he had
hitherto been absorbed. The more he thought on his fatal promise--on
the nation of Antonina--on his duties to the army and the people to whom
he belonged, the more doubtful appeared to him his chance of permanently
protecting the young Roman without risking his degradation as a Goth,
and his ruin as a warrior; and the more sternly and ominously ran in his
ears the unassailable truth of Goisvintha's parting taunt--'You must
remember your promise, you cannot save her if you would!'
Wearied of persisting in deliberations which only deepened his
melancholy and increased his doubts; bent on sinking in a temporary and
delusive oblivion the boding reflections that overcame him in spite of
himself, by seeking--while its enjoyment was yet left to him--the
society of his ill-fated charge, he turned towards his tent, drew aside
the thick, heavy curtains of skins which closed its opening, and
approached the rude couch on which Antonina was still sleeping.
A ray of sunlight, fitful and struggling, burst at this moment through
the heavy clouds, and stole into the opening of the tent as he
contemplated the slumbering girl. It ran its flowing course up her
uncovered hand and arm, flew over her bosom and neck, and bathed in a
bright fresh glow, her still and reposing features. Gradually her limbs
began to move, her lips parted gently and half smiled, as if in welcome
to the greeting of the light; her eyes slightly opened, then dazzled by
the brightness that flowed through their raised lids, tremblingly closed
again. At length thoroughly awakened, she shaded her face with her
hands, and sitting up on the couch, met the gaze of Hermanric fixed on
her in sorrowful examination.
'Your bright armour, and your glorious name, and your merciful words,
have remained with me even in my sleep,' said she, wonderingly; 'and
now, when I awake, I see you before me again! It is a happiness to be
aroused by the sun which has gladdened me all my life, to look upon you
who have given me shelter in my distress! But why,' she continued, in
altered and enquiring tones, 'why do you gaze upon me with doubting and
mournful eyes?'
'You have slept well and safely,' said Hermanric, evasively, 'I closed
the opening of the tent to preserve you from the night-damps, but I have
raised it now, for the air is warming under the rising sun--'
'Are you wearied with watching?' she interrupted, rising to her feet,
and looking anxiously into his face. But he spoke not in reply. His
head was turned towards the door of the tent. He seemed to be listening
for some expected sound. It was evident that he had not heard her
question. She followed the direction of his eyes. The sight of the
great city, half brightened, half darkened, as its myriad buildings
reflected the light of the sun, or retained the shadows of the clouds,
brought back to her remembrance her last night's petition for her
father's safety. She laid her hand upon her companion's arm to awaken
his attention, and hastily resumed:--
'You have not forgotten what I said to you last night? My father's name
is Numerian. He lives on the Pincian Mount. You will save him,
Hermanric--you will save him! You will remember your promise!'
The young warrior's eyes fell as she spoke, and an irrepressible shudder
shook his whole frame. The last part of Antonina's address to him, was
expressed in the same terms as a past appeal from other lips, and in
other accents, which still clung to his memory. The same demand,
'Remember your promise,' which had been advanced to urge him to
bloodshed, by Goisvintha, was now proffered by Antonina, to lure him to
pity. The petition of affection was concluded in the same terms as the
petition of revenge. As he thought on both, the human pity of the one,
and the fiend-like cruelty of the other, rose in sinister and
significant contrast on the mind of the Goth, realising in all its
perils the struggle that was to come when Goisvintha returned, and
dispelling instantaneously the last hopes that he had yet ventured to
cherish for the fugitive at his side.
'No assault of the city is commanded--no assault is intended. Your
father's life is safe from the swords of the Goths,' he gloomily
replied, in answer to Antonina's last words.
The girl moved back from him a few steps as he spoke, and looked
thoughtfully round the tent. The battle-axe that Hermanric had secured
during the scene of the past evening, still lay on the ground, in a
corner. The sight of it brought back a flood of terrible recollections
to her mind. She started violently; a sudden change overspread her
features, and when she again addressed Hermanric, it was with quivering
lips and in almost inarticulate words.
'I know now why you look on me so gloomily,' said she; 'that woman is
coming back! I was so occupied by my dreams and my thoughts of my
father and of you, and my hopes for days to come, that I had forgotten
her when I awoke! But I remember all now! She is coming back--I see
it in your sorrowful eyes--she is coming back to murder me! I shall die
at the moment when I had such hope in my life! There is no happiness
for me! None!--none!'
The Goth's countenance began to darken. He whispered to himself several
times, 'How can I save her?' For a few minutes there was a deep
silence, broken only by the sobs of Antonina. He looked round at her
after an interval. She held her hands clasped over her eyes. The tears
were streaming through her parted fingers; her bosom heaved as if her
emotions would burst their way through it in some palpable form; and her
limbs trembled so, that she could scarcely support herself.
Unconsciously, as he looked on her, he passed his arm round her slender
form, drew her hands gently from her face, and said to her, though his
heart belied his words as he spoke, 'Do not be afraid--trust in me!'
'How can I be calm?' she cried, looking up at him entreatingly; 'I was
so happy last night, so sure that you could preserve me, so hopeful
about to-morrow--and now I see by your mournful looks, I know by your
doubting voice, that to soothe my anguish you have promised me more than
you can perform! The woman who is your companion, has a power over us
both, that it is terrible even to think of! She will return, she will
withdraw all mercy from your heart, she will glare upon me with her
fearful eyes, she will kill me at your feet! I shall die after all I
have suffered and all I have hoped! Oh, Hermanric, while there is yet
time let us escape! You were not made to shed blood--you are too
merciful! God never made you to destroy! You cannot yearn towards
cruelty and woe, for you have aided and protected me! Let us escape! I
will follow you wherever you wish! I will do whatever you ask! I will
go with you beyond those far, bright mountains behind us, to any strange
and distant land; for there is beauty everywhere; there are woods that
may be dwelt in, and valleys that may be loved, on all the surface of
this wide great earth!'
The Goth looked sadly on her as she paused; but he gave her no answer--
the gloom was deepening over his heart--the false words of consolation
were silenced on his lips.
'Think how many pleasures we should enjoy, how much we might see!'
continued the girl, in soft, appealing tones. 'We should be free to
wander wherever we pleased; we should never be lonely; never be
mournful; never be wearied! I could listen to you day after day, while
you told me of the country where your people were born! I could sing
you sweet songs that I have learned upon the lute! Oh, how I have wept
in my loneliness to lead such a life as this! How I have longed that
such freedom and joy might be mine! How I have thought of the distant
lands that I would visit, of the happy nations that I would discover, of
the mountain breezes that I would breathe, of the shady places that I
would repose in, of the rivers that I would follow in their course, of
the flowers I would plant, and the fruits I would gather! How I have
hoped for such an existence as this! How I have longed for a companion
who might enjoy it as I should! Have you never felt this joy that I
have imagined to myself, you who have been free to wander wherever you
pleased? Let us leave this place, and I will teach it to you if you
have not. I will be so patient, so obedient, so happy! I will never be
sorrowful; never repining--but let us escape--Oh, Hermanric, let us
escape while there is yet time! Will you keep me here to be slain? Can
you drive me forth into the world alone? Remember that the gates of the
city and the doors of my home are now closed to me! Remember that I have
no mother, and that my father has forsaken me! Remember that I am a
stranger on the earth which was made for me to be joyful in! Think how
soon the woman who has vowed that she will murder me will return; think
how terrible it is to be in the fear of death; and while there is time
let us depart--Hermanric, Hermanric, if you have pity for me, let us
depart!'
She clasped her hands, and looked up in his face imploringly. The
manner of Hermanric had expressed more to her senses, sharpened as they
were by peril, than his words could have conveyed, even had he confessed
to her the cause of the emotions of doubt and apprehension that
oppressed his mind. Nothing could more strikingly testify to the
innocence of her character and the seclusion of her life, than her
attempt to combine with her escape from Goisvintha's fury, the
acquisition of such a companion as the Goth. But to the forlorn and
affectionate girl who saw herself--a stranger to the laws of the social
existence of her fellow creatures--suddenly thrust forth friendless into
the unfriendly world, could the heart have naturally prompted any other
desire, than anxiety to secure the companion after having discovered the
protector? In the guilelessness of her character, in her absolute
ignorance of humanity, of the influence of custom, of the adaptation of
difference of feeling to difference of sex, she vainly imagined that the
tranquil existence she had urged on Hermanric, would suffice for the
attainment of her end, by presenting the same allurements to him, a
warrior and a Goth, that it contained for her--a lonely, thoughtful,
visionary girl! And yet, so wonderful was the ascendancy that she had
acquired by the magic of her presence, the freshness of her beauty, and
the novelty of her manner, over the heart of the young chieftain, that
he, who would have spurned from him with contempt any other woman who
might have addressed to him such a petition as Antonina's, looked down
sorrowfully at the girl as she ceased speaking, and for an instant
hesitated in his choice.
At that moment, when the attention of each was fixed on the other, a
third person stealthily approached the opening of the tent, and
beholding them together thus, burst into a bitter, taunting laugh.
Hermanric raised his eyes instantly; but the sound of that harsh
unwomanly voice was all-eloquent to Antonina's senses. She hid her face
against the Goth's breast, and murmured breathlessly--'She has returned!
I must die! I must die!'
She had returned! She perceived Hermanric and Antonina in a position,
which left no doubt that a stronger feeling than the mere wish to
protect the victim of her intended revenge, had arisen, during her
absence, in the heart of her kinsman. Hour after hour, while she had
fulfilled her duties by the beds of Alaric's invalided soldiery, had she
brooded over her projects of vengeance and blood. Neither the sickness
nor the death which she had beheld around her, had possessed an
influence powerful enough over the stubborn ferocity which now alone
animated her nature, to lure it to mercy or awe it to repentance.
Invigorated by delay, and enlarged by disappointment, the evil passion
that consumed her had strengthened its power, and aroused the most
latent of its energies, during the silent vigil that she had just held.
She had detested the girl on the evening before, for her nation; she now
hated her for herself.
'What have you to do with the trappings of a Gothic warrior?' she cried,
in mocking accents, pointing at Hermanric with a long hunting-knife
which she held in her hand. 'Why are you here in a Gothic encampment?
Go, knock at the gates of Rome, implore her guards on your knees to
admit you among the citizens, and when they ask you why--show them the
girl there! Tell them that you love her, that you would wed her, that
it is nothing to you that her people have murdered your brother and his
children! And then, when you yourself have begotten sons, Gothic
bastards infected with Roman blood, be a Roman at heart yourself, send
your children forth to complete what your wife's people left undone at
Aquileia--by murdering me!'
She paused and laughed scornfully. Then her humour suddenly changed,
she advanced a few steps, and continued in a louder and sterner tone:--
'You have broken your faith; you have lied to me; you have forgotten
your wrongs and mine; but you have not yet forgotten my parting words
when I left you last night! I told you that she should be slain, and
now that you have refused to avenge me, I will make good my words by
killing her with my own hand! If you would defend her, you must murder
me. You must shed her blood or mine!'
She stepped forward, her towering form was stretched to its highest
stature, the muscles started into action on her bare arms as she raised
them above her head. For one instant, she fixed her glaring eyes
steadily on the girl's shrinking form--the next, she rushed up and
struck furiously with the knife at her bare neck. As the weapon
descended, Hermanric caught her wrist. She struggled violently to
disengage herself from his grasp, but in vain.
The countenance of the young warrior grew deadly pale, as he held her.
For a few minutes he glanced eagerly round the tent, in an agony of
bewilderment and despair. The conflicting interests of his duty towards
his sister, and his anxiety for Antonina's preservation, filled his
heart to distraction. A moment more he hesitated, and during that short
delay, the despotism of custom had yet power enough to prevail over the
promptings of pity. He called to the girl--withdrawing his arm which
had hitherto been her support,--'Go, have mercy on me, go!'
But she neither heeded nor heard him. She fell on her knees at the
woman's feet, and in a low moaning voice faltered out:--
'What have I done that I deserve to be slain? I never murdered your
children; I never yet saw a child but I loved it; if I had seen your
children, I should have loved them!'
'If I had preserved to this time the child that I saved from the
massacre, and you had approached him,' returned the woman fiercely, 'I
would have taught him to strike at you with his little hands! When you
spoke to him, he should have spat upon you for answer--even thus!'
Trembling, exhausted, terrified as she was, the girl's Roman blood
rushed over her pale cheeks as she felt the insult. She turned towards
Hermanric, looked up at him appealingly, attempted to speak, and then
sinking lower upon the ground, wept bitterly.
'Why do you weep and pray and mouth it at him?' shrieked Goisvintha,
pointing to Hermanric with her disengaged hand. 'He has neither courage
to protect you, nor honour to aid me. Do you think that I am to be
moved by your tears and entreaties? I tell you that your people have
slain my husband and my children, and that I hate you for that. I tell
you that you have lured Hermanric into love for a Roman and
unfaithfulness to me, and I will slay you for doing it! I tell you that
there is not a living thing of the blood of your country, or the name of
your nation, throughout the length and breadth of this empire, that I
would not destroy if I had the power! If the very trees on the road
hither could have had feeling, I would have torn the bark from their
stems with my own hands! If a bird, native of your skies, had flown
into my bosom from very tameness and sport, I would have crushed it dead
at my feet! And do you think that you shall escape? Do you think that
I will not avenge the deaths of my husband and my children upon you,
after this?'
As she spoke, she mechanically unclenched her hands. The knife dropped
to the ground. Hermanric instantly stooped and secured it. For a
moment she stood before him released from his grasp, motionless and
speechless. Then, starting as if struck by a sudden idea, she moved
towards the opening of the tent, and, in tones of malignant triumph,
addressed him thus:--
'You shall not save her yet! You are unworthy of your nation and your
name! I will betray your cowardice and treachery to your brethren in
the camp!' And she ran to the outside of the tent, calling in a loud
voice to a group of young warriors who happened to be passing at a short
distance. 'Stay, stay! Fritigern--Athanaric--Colias--Suerid--
Witheric--Fravitta! Hasten hitherward! Hermanric has a captive in his
tent--a prisoner whom it will rejoice to see! Hitherward! hitherward!'
The group she addressed contained some of the most turbulent and
careless spirits of the whole Gothic army. They had just been released
from their duties of the past night, and were at leisure to comply with
Goisvintha's request. She had scarcely concluded her address before
they turned and hurried eagerly up to the tent, shouting to Hermanric,
as they advanced, to make his prisoner visible to them in the open air.
They had probably expected to be regaled by the ludicrous terror of some
Roman slave whom their comrade had discovered lurking in the empty
suburbs; for when they entered the tent, and saw nothing but the
shrinking figure of the unhappy girl, as she crouched on the earth at
Hermanric's feet, they all paused with one accord, and looked round on
each other in speechless astonishment.
'Behold her!' cried Goisvintha, breaking the momentary silence. 'She is
the Roman prisoner that your man of valour there has secured for
himself! For that trembling child he has forgotten the enmities of his
people! She is more to him already than army, general, or companions.
You have watched before the city during the night; but he has stood
sentinel by the maiden of Rome! Hope not that he will share in your
toils, or mix in your pleasures more. Alaric and the warriors have lost
his services--his future king cringes there at his feet!'
She had expected to arouse the anger and excite the jealousy of the
rough audience she addressed; but the result of her envenomed jeers
disappointed her hopes. The humour of the moment prompted the Goths to
ridicule, a course infinitely more inimical to Antonina's interests with
Hermanric than menaces or recrimination. Recovered from their first
astonishment, they burst into a loud and universal laugh.
'Mars and Venus caught together! But, by St. Peter, I see not Vulcan
and the net!' cried Fravitta, who having served in the armies of Rome,
and acquired a vague knowledge there of the ancient mythology, and the
modern politics of the Empire, was considered by his companions as the
wit of the battalion to which he was attached.
'I like her figure,' growled Fritigern, a heavy, phlegmatic giant,
renowned for his imperturbable good humour and his prowess in drinking.
'What little there is of it looks so limp that Hermanric might pack her
into his light baggage and carry her about with him on his shoulders
wherever he goes!'
'By which process you would say, old sucker of wine-skins, that he will
attain the double advantage of always keeping her to himself, and always
keeping her warm,' interrupted Colias, a ruddy, reckless boy of sixteen,
privileged to be impertinent in consideration of his years.
'Is she Orthodox or Arian?' gravely demanded Athanaric, who piqued
himself on his theological accomplishments and his extraordinary piety.
'What hair she has!' exclaimed Suerid, sarcastically. 'It is as black
as the horse-hides of a squadron of Huns!'
'Show us her face! Whose tent will she visit next?' cried Witheric,
with an insolent laugh.
'Mine!' replied Fritigern, complacently. 'What says the chorus of the
song?
'Money and wine Make beauty mine!
I have more of both than any of you. She will come to my tent!'
During the delivery of these clumsy jests, which followed one upon
another with instantaneous rapidity, the scorn at first expressed in
Hermanric's countenance became gradually replaced by a look of
irrepressible anger. As Fritigern spoke, he lost all command over
himself, and seizing his sword, advanced threateningly towards the easy-
tempered giant, who made no attempt to recede or defend himself, but
called out soothingly, 'Patience, man! patience! Would you kill an old
comrade for jesting? I envy you your good luck as a friend, not as an
enemy!'
Yielding to the necessity of lowering his sword before a defenceless
man, Hermanric was about to reply angrily to Fritigern, when his voice
was drowned in the blast of a trumpet, sounding close by the tent. The
signal that it gave was understood at once by the group of jesters still
surrounding the young Goth. They turned, and retired without an
instant's delay. The last of their number had scarcely disappeared,
when the same veteran who had spoken with Hermanric, on the departure of
Goisvintha the evening before, entered and thus addressed him:--
'You are commanded to post yourself with the division that now awaits
you, at a place eastward of your present position, which will be shown
you by a guide. Make ready at once--you have not an instant to delay.'
As the words passed the old man's lips, Hermanric turned and looked on
Goisvintha. During the presence of the Goths in the tent, she had sat
listening to their rough jeers in suppressed wrath and speechless
disdain; now she rose and advanced a few steps. But there suddenly
appeared an unwonted hesitation in her gait; her face was pale; she
breathed fast and heavily. 'Where will you shelter her now?' she cried,
addressing Hermanric, and threatening the girl with her outstretched
hands. 'Abandon her to your companions, or leave her to me; she is lost
either way! I shall triumph--triumph!'--
At this moment her voice sank to an unintelligible murmur; she tottered
where she stood. It was evident that the long strife of passions during
her past night of watching, and the fierce and varying emotions of the
morning, suddenly brought to a crisis, as they had been, by her
exultation when she heard the old warrior's fatal message, had at length
overtasked the energies even of her powerful frame. Yet one moment more
she endeavoured to advance, to speak, to snatch the hunting knife from
Hermanric's hand; the next she fell insensible at his feet.
Goaded almost to madness by the successive trials that he had undergone;
Goisvintha's furious determination to thwart him, still present to his
mind; the scornful words of his companions yet ringing in his ears; his
inexorable duties demanding his attention without reserve or delay;
Hermanric succumbed at last under the difficulties of his position, and
despairingly abandoned all further hope of effecting the girl's
preservation. Pointing to some food that lay in a corner of the tent,
and to the country behind, he said to her, in broken and gloomy accents,
'Furnish yourself with those provisions, and fly, while Goisvintha is
yet unable to pursue you. I can protect you no longer!'
Until this moment, Antonina had kept her face hidden, and had remained
still crouching on the ground; motionless, save when a shudder ran
through her frame as she listened to the loud, coarse jesting of the
Goths; and speechless, except that when Goisvintha sank senseless to the
earth, she uttered an exclamation of terror. But now, when she heard
the sentence of her banishment proclaimed by the very lips which but the
evening before had assured her of shelter and protection, she rose up
instantly, cast on the young Goth a glance of such speechless misery and
despair, that he involuntarily quailed before it; and then, without a
tear or a sigh, without a look of reproach, or a word of entreaty,
petrified and bowed down beneath a perfect trance of terror and grief,
she left the tent.
Hurrying his actions with the reckless energy of a man determined on
banishing his thoughts by his employments, Hermanric placed himself at
the head of his troop, and marched quickly onwards in an eastward
direction past the Pincian Gate. Two of his attendants who happened to
enter the tent after his departure, observing Goisvintha still extended
on the earth, proceeded to transport her to part of the camp occupied by
the women who were attached to the army; and then, the little sheltering
canopy which made the abode of the Goth, and which had witnessed so
large a share of human misery and so fierce a war of human contention in
so few hours, was left as silent and lonely as the deserted country in
which Antonina was now fated to seek a refuge and a home.
CHAPTER 12. THE PASSAGE OF THE WALL.
'A fair night this, Balbus! All moonlight and no mist! I was posted
last evening at the Ostian Gate, and was half choked by the fog.'
'If you were posted last night at the Ostian Gate, you were better
placed than you are now. The ramparts here are as lonely as a ruin in
the provinces. Nothing behind us but the back of the Pincian Mount;
nothing before us but the empty suburbs; nothing at each side of us but
brick and stone; nothing at our posts but ourselves. May I be crucified
like St. Peter, if I believe that there is another place on the whole
round of the walls possessed of such solitary dulness as this!'
'You are a man to find something to complain of, if you were lodged in
one of the palaces yonder. The place is solitary enough, it is true;
but whether it is dull or not depends on ourselves, its most honourable
occupants. I, for one, am determined to promote its joviality by the
very praiseworthy exertion of obliging you, my discontented friend, with
an inexhaustible series of those stories for which, I may say, without
arrogance, I am celebrated throughout the length and breadth of all the
barracks of Rome.'
'You may tell as many stories as you please, but do not imagine that I
will make one of your audience.'
'You are welcome to attend to me or not, as you choose. Though you do
not listen, I shall still relate my stories by way of practice. I will
address them to the walls, or to the air, or to the defunct gods and
goddesses of antiquity, should they happen at this moment to be hovering
over the city in a rage, as some of the unconverted would have us
believe; or to our neighbours the Goths, if they are seized with a
sudden desire to quite their encampments, and obtain a near view of the
fortifications that they are so discreetly unwilling to assault. Or,
these materials for a fit and decent auditory failing me, I will tell my
stories to the most attentive of all listeners--myself.'
And the sentinel, without further delay, opened his budget of anecdotes,
with the easy fluency of of a man who possessed a well-placed confidence
in the perfection of his capacities for narration. Determined that his
saturnine colleague should hear him, though he would not give him his
attention, he talked in a raised voice, pacing briskly backwards and
forwards over the space of his allotted limits, and laughing with
ludicrous regularity and complacency at every jest that he happened to
make in the course of his ill-rewarded narrative. He little thought, as
he continued to proceed in his tale that its commencement had been
welcomed by an unseen hearer, with emotions widely different from those
which had dictated the observations of the unfriendly companion of his
watch.
True to his determination, Ulpius, with part of the wages which he had
hoarded in Numerian's service, had procured a small lantern from a shop
in one of the distant quarters of Rome; and veiling its light in a piece
of coarse, thick cloth, had proceeded by the solitary pathway to his
second night's labour at the wall. He arrived at the breach, at the
commencement of the dialogue above related, and heard with delight the
sentinel's noisy resolution to amuse his companion in spite of himself.
The louder and the longer the man talked, the less probable was the
chance that the Pagan's labours in the interior of the wall would be
suspected or overheard.
Softly clearing away the brushwood at the entrance of the hole that he
had made the night before, Ulpius crept in as far as he had penetrated
on that occasion; and then, with mingled emotions of expectation and
apprehension which affected him so powerfully, that he was for the
moment hardly master of his actions, he slowly and cautiously uncovered
his light.
His first glance was intuitively directed to the cavity that opened
beneath him. He saw immediately that it was less important, both in
size and depth, than he had imagined it to be. The earth at this
particular place had given way beneath the foundations of the wall,
which had sunk down, deepening the chasm by their weight, into the
yielding ground beneath them. A small spring of water (probably the
first cause of the sinking in the earth) had bubbled up into the space
in the brick-work, which bit by bit, and year by year, it had gradually
undermined. Nor did it remain stagnant at this place. It trickled
merrily and quietly onward--a tiny rivulet, emancipated from one prison
in the ground only to enter another in the wall, bounded by no grassy
banks, brightened by no cheerful light, admired by no human eye,
followed in its small course through the inner fissures in the brick by
no living thing but a bloated toad, or a solitary lizard: yet wending
as happily on its way through darkness and ruin, as its sisters who were
basking in the sunlight of the meadows, or leaping in the fresh breezes
of the open mountain side.
Raising his eyes from the little spring, Ulpius next directed his
attention to the prospect above him.
Immediately over his head, the material of the interior of the wall
presented a smooth, flat, hard surface, which seemed capable of
resisting the most vigorous attempts at its destruction; but on looking
round, he perceived at one side of him and further inwards, an
appearance of dark, dimly-defined irregularity, which promised
encouragingly for his intended efforts. He descended into the chasm of
the rivulet, crawled up on a heap of crumbling brick-work, and gained a
hole above it, which he immediately began to widen, to admit of his
passage through. Inch by inch, he enlarged the rift, crept into it, and
found himself on a fragment of the bow of one of the foundation arches,
which, though partly destroyed, still supported itself, isolated from
all connection with the part of the upper wall which it had once
sustained, and which had gradually crumbled away into the cavities
below.
He looked up. An immense rift soared above him, stretching its tortuous
ramifications, at different points, into every part of the wall that was
immediately visible. The whole structure seemed, at this place, to have
received a sudden and tremendous wrench. But for the support of the
sounder fortifications at each side of it, it could not have sustained
itself after the shock. The Pagan gazed aloft, into the fearful breaches
which yawned above him, with ungovernable awe. His small, fitful light
was not sufficient to show him any of their terminations. They looked,
as he beheld them in dark relief against the rest of the hollow part of
the wall, like mighty serpents twining their desolating path right
upward to the ramparts above; and he, himself, as he crouched on his
pinnacle with his little light by his side, was reduced by the wild
grandeur, the vast, solemn gloom of the obscure, dusky, and fantastic
objects around him, to the stature of a pigmy. Could he have been seen
from the ramparts high overhead, as he now peered down behind his
lantern into the cavities and irregularities below him, he would have
looked, with his flickering light, like a mole led by a glow-worm.
He paused to consider his next movements. In a stationary position, the
damp coldness of the atmosphere was almost insupportable, but he
attained a great advantage by his present stillness: he could listen
undisturbed by the noises made by the bricks which crumbled from under
him, if he advanced.
Ere long, he heard a thin, winding, long-drawn sound, now louder, now
softer; now approaching, now retreating; now verging towards shrillness,
now quickly returning to a faint, gentle swell. Suddenly this strange
unearthly music was interrupted by a succession of long, deep, rolling
sounds, which travelled grandly about the fissures above, like prisoned
thunderbolts striving to escape. Utterly ignorant that the first of
these noises was occasioned by the night wind winding through the rents
in the brick of the outer wall beyond him; and the second, by the echoes
produced in the irregular cavities above, by the footfall of the
sentries overhead--roused by the influence of the place, and the mystery
of his employment, to a pitch of fanatic exaltation, which for the
moment absolutely unsteadied his reason--filled with the frantic
enthusiasm of his designs, and the fearful legends of invisible beings
and worlds which made the foundation of his worship, Ulpius conceived,
as he listened to the sounds around and above, that the gods of
antiquity were now in viewless congregation hovering about him, and
calling to him in unearthly voices and in an unknown tongue, to proceed
upon his daring enterprise, in the full assurance of its near and
glorious success.
'Roar and mutter, and make your hurricane music in my ears!' exclaimed
the Pagan, raising his withered hands, and addressing in a savage
ecstacy his imagined deities. 'Your servant Ulpius stops not on the
journey that leads him to your repeopled shrines! Blood, crime, danger,
pain--pride and honour, joy and rest, have I strewn like sacrifices at
your altars' feet! Time has whirled past me; youth and manhood have
lain long since buried in the hidden Lethe which is the portion of life;
age has wreathed his coils over my body's strength, but still I watch by
your temples and serve your mighty cause! Your vengeance is near!
Monarchs of the world, your triumph is at hand!'
He remained for some time in the same position, looking fixedly up into
the trackless darkness above him, drinking in the sounds which--
alternately rising and sinking--still floated round him. The trembling
gleam of his lantern fell red and wild upon his livid countenance. His
shaggy hair floated in the cold breezes that blew by him. At this
moment he would have appeared from a distance, like a phantom of fire
perishing in a mist of darkness; like a Gnome in adoration in the bowels
of the earth; like a forsaken spirit in a solitary purgatory, watching
for the advent of a glimpse of beauty, or a breath of air.
At length he aroused himself from his trance, trimmed with careful hand
his guiding lantern, and set forward to penetrate the breadth of the
great rift he had just entered.
He moved on in an oblique direction several feet, now creeping over the
tops of the foundation arches, now skirting the extremities of
protrusions in the ruined brick-work, now descending into dark slimy
rubbish-choked chasms, until the rift suddenly diminished in all
directions.
The atmosphere was warmer in the place he now occupied; he could faintly
distinguish patches of dark moss, dotted here and there over the uneven
surface of the wall; and once or twice, some blades of long flat grass,
that grew from a prominence immediately above his head, were waved in
his face by the wind, which he could now feel blowing through the narrow
fissure that he was preparing to enlarge. It was evident that he had by
this time advanced to within a few feet of the outer extremity of the
wall.
'Numerian wanders after his child through the streets,' muttered the
Pagan, as he deposited his lantern by his side, bared his trembling
arms, and raised his iron bar, 'the slaves of his neighbour the senator
are forth to pursue me. On all sides my enemies are out after me; but,
posted here, I mock their strictest search! If they would track me to
my hiding-place, they must penetrate the walls of Rome! If they would
hunt me down in my lair, they must assail me to-night in the camp of the
Goths! Fools! let them look to themselves! I seal the doom of their
city, with the last brick that I tear from their defenceless walls!'
He laughed to himself as he thrust his bar boldly into the crevice
before him. In some places the bricks yielded easily to his efforts; in
others, their resistance was only to be overcome by the exertion of his
utmost strength. Resolutely and unceasingly he continued his labours;
now wounding his hands against the jagged surfaces presented by the
widening fissure; now involuntarily dropping his instrument from
ungovernable exhaustion; but, still working bravely on, in defiance of
every hindrance that opposed him, until he gained the interior of the
new rift.
As he drew his lantern after him into the cavity that he had made, he
perceived that, unless it was heightened immediately over him, he could
proceed no further, even in a creeping position. Irritated at this
unexpected necessity for more violent exertion, desperate in his
determination to get through the wall at all hazards on that very night,
he recklessly struck his bar upwards with all his strength, instead of
gradually and softly loosening the material of the surface that opposed
him, as he had done before.
A few moments of this labour had scarcely elapsed, when a considerable
portion of the brick-work, consolidated into one firm mass, fell with
lightning suddenness from above. It hurled him under it, prostrate on
the foundation arch which had been his support; crushed and dislocated
his right shoulder; and shivered his lantern into fragments. A groan of
irrepressible anguish burst from his lips. He was left in impenetrable
darkness.
The mass of brick-work, after it had struck him, rolled a little to one
side. By a desperate exertion he extricated himself from under it--only
to swoon from the fresh anguish caused to him by the effort.
For a short time he lay insensible in his cold dark solitude. Then,
reviving after this first shock, he began to experience in all their
severity, the fierce spasms, the dull gnawings, the throbbing torments,
that were the miserable consequences of the injury he received. His arm
lay motionless by his side--he had neither strength nor resolution to
move any one of the other sound limbs in his body. At one moment his
deep, sobbing, stifled respirations, syllabled horrible and half-formed
curses--at another, his panting breaths suddenly died away within him;
and then he could hear the blood dripping slowly from his shoulder, with
dismal regularity, into a little pool that it had formed already by his
side.
The shrill breezes which wound through the crevices in the wall before
him, were now felt only on his wounded limb. They touched its surface
like innumerable splinters of thin, sharp ice; they penetrated his flesh
like rushing sparks struck out of a sea of molten lead. There were
moments, during the first pangs of this agony, when if he had been
possessed of a weapon and of the strength to use it, he would have
sacrificed his ambition for ever by depriving himself of life.
But this desire to end his torments with his existence lasted not long.
Gradually, the anguish in his body awakened a wilder and stronger
distemper in his mind, and then the two agonies, physical and mental,
rioted over him together in fierce rivalry, divesting him of all
thoughts but such as were by their own agency created or aroused.
For some time he lay helpless in his misery, alternately venting by
stifled groans the unalleviated torment of his wounds, and lamenting
with curses the failure of his enterprise, at the very moment of its
apparent success. At length, the pangs that struck through him seemed
to grow gradually less frequent; he hardly knew now from what part of
his frame they more immediately proceeded. Insensibly, his faculties of
thinking and feeling grew blunted; then he remained a little while in a
mysterious unrefreshing repose of body and mind; and then his disordered
senses, left unguided and unrestrained, became the victims of a sudden
and terrible delusion.
The blank darkness around him appeared, after an interval, to be
gradually dawning into a dull light, thick and misty, like the
reflections on clouds which threaten a thunderstorm at the close of
evening. Soon, this atmosphere seemed to be crossed and streaked with a
fantastic trellis-work of white, seething vapour. Then the mass of
brick-work which had struck him down, grew visible at his side, enlarged
to an enormous bulk, and endued with a power of self-motion, by which it
mysteriously swelled and shrank, and raised and depressed itself,
without quitting for a moment its position near him. And then, from its
dark and toiling surface there rose a long stream of dusky shapes, which
twined themselves about the misty trellis-work above, and took the
prominent and palpable form of human countenances, marked by every
difference of age and distorted by every variety of suffering.
There were infantine faces, wreathed about with grave-worms that hung
round them like locks of filthy hair; aged faces, dabbled with gore and
slashed with wounds; youthful faces, seamed with livid channels, along
which ran unceasing tears; lovely faces, distorted into fixed
expressions of raging pain, wild malignity, and despairing gloom. Not
one of these countenances exactly resembled the other. Each was
distinguished by a revolting character of its own. Yet, however
deformed might be their other features, the eyes of all were preserved
unimpaired. Speechless and bodiless, they floated in unceasing myriads
up to the fantastic trellis-work, which seemed to swell its wild
proportions to receive them. There they clustered, in their goblin
amphitheatre, and fixed and silently they all glared down, without one
exception, on the Pagan's face!
Meanwhile, the walls at the side began to gleam out with a light of
their own, making jagged boundaries to the midway scene of phantom
faces. Then the rifts in their surfaces widened, and disgorged
misshapen figures of priests and idols of the old time, which came forth
in every hideous deformity of aspect, mocking at the faces on the
trellis-work; while behind and over the whole, soared shapes of gigantic
darkness, robed in grim cloudy resemblances of skins such as were worn
by the Goths, and wielding through the quivering vapour, mighty and
shadow-like weapons of war. From the whole of this ghastly assemblage
there rose not the slightest sound. A stillness, as of a dead and ruined
world, possessed in all its quarters the appalling scene. The deep
echoes of the sentries' footsteps and the faint dirging of the
melancholy winds were no more. The blood that had as yet dripped from
his wound, made no sound now in the Pagan's ear; even his own agony of
terror was as silent as were the visionary demons who had aroused it.
Days, years, centuries, seemed to pass, as he lay gazing up, in a trance
of horror, into his realm of peopled and ghostly darkness. At last
nature yielded under the trial; the phantom prospect suddenly whirled
round him with fearful velocity, and his senses sought refuge from the
thraldom of their own creation in a deep and welcome swoon.
Time had moved wearily onward, the chiding winds had many times waved
the dry locks of his hair to and fro about his brow, as if to bid him
awaken and arise, ere he again recovered his consciousness. Once more
aroused to the knowledge of his position and the sensation of his wound,
he slowly raised himself upon his uninjured arm, and looked wildly
around for the faintest appearance of a gleam of light. But the winding
and uneven nature of the track which he had formed to lead him through
the wall, effectually prevented the moonbeams, then floating into the
outermost of the cavities that he had made, from reaching the place
where he now lay. Not a single object was even faintly distinguishable
around him. Darkness hemmed him in, in rayless and triumphant
obscurity, on every side.
The first agonies of the injury he had received had resolved themselves
into one dull, heavy, unchanging sensation of pain. The vision that had
overwhelmed his senses was now, in a vast and shadowy form, present only
to his memory, filling the darkness with fearful recollections, and not
with dismal forms; and urging on him a restless, headlong yearning to
effect his escape from the lonely and unhallowed sepulchre, the prison
of solitude and death, that his own fatal exertions threatened him with,
should he linger much longer in the caverns of the wall.
'I must pass from this darkness into light--I must breathe the air of
the sky, or I shall perish in the damps of this vault,' he exclaimed in
a hoarse, moaning voice, as he raised himself gradually and painfully
into a creeping position; and turning round slowly, commenced his
meditated retreat.
His brain still whirled with the emotions that had so lately overwhelmed
his mind; his right hand hung helplessly by his side, dragged after him
like a prisoner's chain, and lacerated by the uneven surface of the
ground over which it was slowly drawn, as--supporting himself on his
left arm, and creeping forward a few inches at a time--he set forth on
his toilsome journey.
Here, he paused bewildered in the darkness; there, he either checked
himself by a convulsive effort from falling headlong into the unknown
deeps beneath him, or lost the little ground he had gained in labour and
agony, by retracing his way at the bidding of some unexpected obstacle.
Now he gnashed his teeth in anguish, now he cursed in despair, now he
was breathless with exhaustion; but still, with an obstinacy that had in
it something of the heroic, he never failed in his fierce resolution to
effect his escape.
Slowly and painfully, moving with the pace and the perseverance of the
tortoise, hopeless yet determined as a navigator in a strange sea, he
writhed onward and onward upon his unguided course, until he reaped at
length the reward of his long suffering, by the sudden discovery of a
thin ray of moonlight toiling through a crevice in the murky brickwork
before him. Hardly did the hearts of the Magi when the vision of 'the
star in the East' first dawned on their eyes, leap within them with a
more vivid transport, than that which animated the heart of Ulpius at
the moment when he beheld the inspiring and guiding light.
Yet a little more exertion, a little more patience, a little more
anguish; and he stood once again, a ghastly and crippled figure, before
the outer cavity in the wall.
It was near daybreak; the moon shone faintly in the dull, grey heaven; a
small, vaporous rain was sinking from the shapeless clouds; the waning
night showed bleak and cheerless to the earth, but cast no mournful or
reproving influence over the Pagan's mind. He looked round on his
solitary lurking place, and beheld no human figure in its lonely
recesses. He looked up at the ramparts, and saw that the sentinels
stood silent and apart, wrapped in their heavy watch-cloaks, and
supported on their trusty weapons. It was perfectly apparent that the
events of his night of suffering and despair had passed unheeded by the
outer world.
He glanced back with a shudder upon his wounded and helpless limb; then
his eyes fixed themselves upon the wall. After surveying it with an
earnest and defiant gaze, he slowly moved the brushwood with his foot,
against the small cavity in its outer surface.
'Days pass, wounds heal, chances change,' muttered the old man,
departing from his haunt with slow and uncertain steps. 'In the mines I
have borne lashes without a murmur--I have felt my chains widening, with
each succeeding day, the ulcers that their teeth of iron first gnawed in
my flesh, and have yet lived to loosen my fetters, and to close my
sores! Shall this new agony have a power to conquer me greater than the
others that are past? I will even yet return in time to overcome the
resistance of the wall! My arm is crushed, but my purpose is whole!'
CHAPTER 13. THE HOUSE IN THE SUBURBS.
Retracing some hours, we turn from the rifted wall to the suburbs and
the country which its ramparts overlook; abandoning the footsteps of the
maimed and darkly-plotting Ulpius, our attention now fixes itself on the
fortunes of Hermanric, and the fate of Antonina.
Although the evening had as yet scarcely closed, the Goth had allotted
to the warriors under his command their different stations for the night
in the lonely suburbs of the city. This duty performed, he was left to
the unbroken solitude of the deserted tenement which now served him as a
temporary abode.
The house he occupied was the last of the wide and irregular street in
which it stood; it looked towards the wall beneath the Pincian Mount,
from which it was separated by a public garden about half a mile in
extent. This once well-thronged place of recreation was now totally
unoccupied. Its dull groves were brightened by no human forms; the
chambers of its gay summer houses were dark and desolate; the booths of
its fruit and flower-sellers stood vacant on its untrodden lawns.
Melancholy and forsaken, it stretched forth as a fertile solitude under
the very walls of a crowded city.
And yet there was a charm inexpressibly solemn and soothing in the
prospect of loneliness that it presented, as its flower-beds and trees
were now gradually obscured to the eye in the shadows of the advancing
night. It gained in its present refinement as much as it had lost of
its former gaiety; it had its own simple attraction still, though it
failed to sparkle to the eye with its accustomed illuminations, or to
please the ear by the music and laughter, which rose from it in times of
peace. As he looked forth over the view from the terrace of his new
abode, the remembrance of the employments of his past and busy hours
deserted the memory of the young Goth, leaving his faculties free to
welcome the reflections which night began insensibly to awaken and
create.
Employed under such auspices, whither would the thoughts of Hermanric
naturally stray?
From the moonlight that already began to ripple over the topmost
trembling leaves of the trees beyond him, to the delicate and shadowy
flowers that twined up the pillars of the deserted terrace where he now
stood, every object he beheld connected itself, to his vivid and
uncultured imagination, with the one being of whom all that was
beautiful in nature, seemed to him the eloquent and befitting type. He
thought of Antonina whom he had once protected; of Antonina whom he had
afterwards abandoned; of Antonina whom he had now lost!
Strong in the imaginative and weak in the reasoning faculties; gifted
with large moral perception and little moral firmness; too easy to be
influenced and too difficult to be resolved, Hermanric had deserted the
girl's interests from an infirmity of disposition, rather than from a
determination of will. Now, therefore, when the employments of the day
had ceased to absorb his attention; now when silence and solitude led
his memory back to his morning's abandonment of his helpless charge,
that act of fatal impatience and irresolution inspired him with the
strongest emotions of sorrow and remorse. If during her sojourn under
his care, Antonina had insensibly influenced his heart, her image, now
that he reflected on his guilty share in their parting scene, filled all
his thoughts, at once saddening and shaming him, as he remembered her
banishment from the shelter of his tent.
Every feeling which had animated his reflections on Antonina on the
previous night, was doubled in intensity as he thought on her now.
Again he recalled her eloquent words, and remembered the charm of her
gentle and innocent manner; again he dwelt on the beauties of her
outward form. Each warm expression; each varying intonation of voice
that had accompanied her petition to him for safety and companionship;
every persuasion that she had used to melt him, now revived in his
memory and moved in his heart with steady influence and increasing
power. All the hurried and imperfect pictures of happiness which she
had drawn to allure him, now expanded and brightened, until his mind
began to figure to him visions that had been hitherto unknown to
faculties occupied by no other images than those of rivalry, turbulence,
and strife. Scenes called into being by Antonina's lightest and
hastiest expressions, now rose vague and shadowy before his brooding
spirit. Lovely places of earth that he had visited and forgotten now
returned to his recollection, idealised and refined as he thought of
her. She appeared to his mind in every allurement of action, fulfilling
all the duties and enjoying all the pleasures that she had proposed to
him. He imagined her happy and healthful, journeying gaily by his side
in the fresh morning, with rosy cheek and elastic step; he imagined her
delighting him by her promised songs, enlivening him by her eloquent
words, in the mellow stillness of evening; he imagined her sleeping,
soft and warm and still, in his protecting arms--ever happy and ever
gentle; girl in years, and woman in capacities; at once lover and
companion, teacher and pupil, follower and guide!
Such she might have been once! What was she now?
Was she sinking under her loneliness, perishing from exposure and
fatigue, repulsed by the cruel, or mocked by the unthinking? To all
these perils and miseries had he exposed her; and to what end? To
maintain the uncertain favour, to preserve the unwelcome friendship, of
a woman abandoned even by the most common and intuitive virtues of her
sex; whose frantic craving for revenge, confounded justice with
treachery, innocence with guilt, helplessness with tyranny; whose claims
of nation and relationship should have been forfeited in his estimation,
by the openly-confessed malignity of her designs, at the fatal moment
when she had communicated them to him in all their atrocity, before the
walls of Rome. He groaned in despair, as he thought on this, the most
unworthy of the necessities, to which the forsaken girl had been
sacrificed.
Soon, however, his mind reverted from such reflections as these, to his
own duties and his own renown; and here his remorse became partially
lightened, though his sorrow remained unchanged.
Wonderful as had been the influence of Antonina's presence and
Antonina's words over the Goth, they had not yet acquired power enough
to smother in him entirely the warlike instincts of his sex and nation,
or to vanquish the strong and hostile promptings of education and
custom. She had gifted him with new emotions, and awakened him to new
thought; she had aroused all the dormant gentleness of his disposition
to war against the rugged indifference, the reckless energy, that
teaching and example had hitherto made a second nature to his heart.
She had wound her way into his mind, brightening its dark places,
enlarging its narrow recesses, beautifying its unpolished treasures.
She had created, she had refined, during her short hours of
communication with him, but she had not lured his disposition entirely
from its old habits and its old attachments; she had not yet stripped
off the false glitter from barbarian strife, or the pomp from martial
renown; she had not elevated the inferior intellectual, to the height of
the superior moral faculties, in his inward composition. Submitted
almost impartially to the alternate and conflicting dominion of the two
masters, Love and Duty, he at once regretted Antonina, and yet clung
mechanically to his old obedience to those tyrannic requirements of
nation and name, which had occasioned her loss.
Oppressed by his varying emotions, destitute alike of consolation and
advice, the very inaction of his present position sensibly depressed
him. He rose impatiently, and buckling on his weapons, sought to escape
from his thoughts, by abandoning the scene under the influence of which
they had been first aroused. Turning his back upon the city, he
directed his steps at random, through the complicated labyrinth of
streets, composing the extent of the deserted suburbs.
After he had passed through the dwellings comprised in the occupation of
the Gothic lines, and had gained those situated nearer to the desolate
country beyond, the scene around him became impressive enough to have |
