AMONG THE HUNS—LEO AND ATTILA.
But in the midst of the tide of universal rejoicing (as in the midst of
the malaria of almost universal corruption), one little fresh spring of
pure and tender joy had burst forth for the household on the Aventine.
The ocean tide might and did ebb back from high-water mark; but when it
receded, a little fountain of sweet fresh water was found welling up
from other depths below earth and sea, as sometimes on the shores of our
western seas.
Slowly, with the uncertain gait of one toiling up from the ravine of the
shadow of death, Marius was creeping up the Aventine, almost spent with
fatigue. Ethne saw him first from the terrace above the gardens. In a
moment she was at his side, and they were climbing the hill together,
those two who were thenceforth to make their uphill journey together all
the way.
For a moment he clasped her to his heart.
“It is through thee I am here,” he said, “through thee that I ever came
back at all. It is thou who hast given me back my life.”
She could only murmur a few words of Patrick’s hymn, and then, “I always
knew He would bring thee back;” and again accepting her support for his
feeble steps, they moved on till he reached the familiar portico with her.
That evening little more could be said. That “he was there,” as one
raised from the dead, and that “He Who brought him back was there,” with
them all, always, to the end, was for the hearts of all “gladness so
complete,” that no more could be poured in.
The welcome, the peace of home, the love, old and new, and at last the
falling asleep, watched by his mother’s eyes, as when he was a child,
wrought wonders in one night. In the evening scarcely any eyes but those
of the love that had never ceased expecting him could have recognized
him, with the feeble gait, the hollow eyes, the worn, pale cheek. In the
morning the soul had visibly taken her place on the throne again, and he
was himself. Still the careful nurses rigidly insisted on rest, until by
the next day he had gathered strength to tell his story.
“I was in the tower in Aquileia with the Lady Digna,” he began. “The
yells of the victorious Huns were all around us, closer and closer up
the steps. When she sprang from the tower into the river, something
like madness seized me, as doubtless it had seized her, and I sprang
after her, with some wild hope of saving her. I sank and then rose, and
seemed to grasp her robe, and swam, keeping desperate hold of it, and
then clutched something with one hand, which may have been a post for
fastening boats to on the other side of the river. Then something struck
my head, whether a javelin from the Huns or the strong current dashing
me against the point of rock I know not. I could only cry, ‘Christe
Domine, miserere nobis!’ Then I became unconscious, and when I awoke in
the night, hours afterwards, I was stretched on the opposite bank of the
river, alone.”
“Then thy ‘Miserere’ may have been the last sound on her dying ear?” said
Damaris.
“I know not,” he replied. “At all events, the mercy for which I cried,
the Christ on Whom I called, was there, and not uncaring or asleep.”
After a pause he went on—
“I was alone. It was night, but the river and all the land around
were lit up by the flames of the burning city. And the silence of
night was broken by exulting yells of vengeance, by cries of agony and
vain entreaty, and, worse almost than all, by the hideous laughter of
bacchanalian orgies.
“Something must have wounded me, for my head and hands were bleeding,
and I was faint with loss of blood. But I contrived to creep under the
shelter of an empty cattle-shed in the desolate fields; and there I lay,
I know not how long—lay there,” he continued, turning to Ethne, “until I
was saved through thee.
“A poor woman of the Huns was gathering sticks for a fire, and seeing
me lying there, seeming, I suppose, at the point of death, she had
compassion on me. She went and brought me food and drink; and then in
broken Latin, such as the barbarian tribes who settle on our frontiers
learn to speak, she said, ‘A Roman woman saved my son. I will save thee.’
Her son was a brother of the dying boy beside whom I saw thee first at
Orleans. The brother was among the wounded Huns left in the city when
the siege was raised, one of those enemies whom Bishop Anianus desired
the Christian women to succour, and thee among them. By degrees, as she
tended me, the whole story came out; and, from her description, it could
have been no one but thyself who hadst also ministered to the brother
of the boy who died with his hand in thine. She was a woman of some
consideration among the Huns. I should hardly have been spared but for
her pleading. They had at that time no use for captive slaves, to carry
about and feed, and no spark of mercy for Roman soldiers; although I
think those of us who shared in the defence of Aquileia, when once the
first deadly rage of vengeance was assuaged in blood, were held even by
them in a kind of rough honour. Again and again I heard men among them
say, ‘If all Roman cities had been like Aquileia we should never have
been here; but we and Rome might have been not foes but friends.’
“Also,” Marius continued, turning to his mother, “I told her of thee,
and,” with a lowered voice to Ethne, “of thee and our betrothal, and that
touched her heart. As my strength returned, I was able to be of some
service to her, and she insisted on bringing me to the notice of her
king, Attila himself. It was perilous, for he has frightful streaks of
savage fierceness and haughtiness, not blending, but violently jarring,
with occasional vibrations of affection and kindliness, and flashes of
grim humour and wit, all crude and unmixed, so that you can never tell
which you will find uppermost. Moreover, as you all know now, he has a
wonderful keen eye and a genuine honour for _truth_, the truth of which
he has had so little experience amongst us. And I suppose he felt in some
way that I was true. So it happened that I was much about his court and
in his presence, and saw strange and unexpected things in Attila and in
his Huns. For you were right, mother,” he went on, “there are no ‘half
beasts’ in the creation of God, though, alas! there are half devils,
fallen as the original devils of old. And _you_ were right,” he added,
looking at Ethne; “if all the Christians Attila had met had been saints,
indeed had been ordinarily good or true, who can say what Attila might
have become?
“He has a royal contempt for mere tinsel and glitter. While his courtiers
prank themselves in the borrowed splendours of the vanquished, he still
wears his old Scythian skins and tanned leather. While they emulate the
banquets of the Imperial court, he lives on the simplest, roughest food.
It is said he never eats bread, but only meat, and that often half raw.”
“An independence of cookery which scarcely disproves his likeness to the
beasts,” interposed Fabricius, with a grave smile; to which Marius made
no retort.
“I saw Attila among his sons,” he said, “at a banquet, accompanied by
wild music, with panegyrics on him and his victorious warriors and
chiefs, no doubt as harmonious and satisfactory to the Huns as the
strains of Greece or the rhetoric of our Sidonius Apollinaris to our
Emperor. But Attila did not seem to heed them. All the time his heart
and thoughts seemed set on a young lad, his youngest son, as he kept
caressing his curly hair with his hand, and jesting with the child who
will, he hopes, succeed him.
“And then came the strange, grotesque pomp of his enthronement in the
Imperial palace at Milan, the palace from which Constantine issued the
edict proclaiming Christianity the religion of the Empire, and where the
great Theodosius listened to Ambrose.
“There is a painting on the palace walls which greatly offended Attila,
representing the Scythian (or some barbarian) chieftains crouching in
homage (and some of them stretched vanquished and slain) before the two
golden thrones of the two Emperors of the East and West. As an expiation
he commanded a Roman or Greek artist, not to paint this picture out,
but, leaving it to satirize to itself, to paint opposite to it another
picture representing the two Emperors of East and West, laden with sacks
full of the gold coin of the tribute to the Huns, humbly emptying them
at the feet of Attila. Happily for me, my mother, I have not the genius
of thy forefathers, and could not paint; otherwise a difficult dilemma
might have been set before me. But all the time I was in the camp of the
Huns, and at the court of Attila, I could not but observe an uneasiness
and uncertainty and vague dread ever growing and gathering over the
rude warriors, and even over Attila himself. They seemed satiated with
slaughter, and in some dim way under a spell, afraid of losing their
plunder, afraid of the avenging power of the civilization they were
ruining, afraid of the ancient names of Italy and Rome, haunted by the
fate of Alaric, our Rome’s last conqueror. Not a few of the bravest even
ventured to suggest that the host should return beyond the Danube to
enjoy their spoils and employ the captives they had already won.
“And then,” he concluded, “as you all know, came the embassy from
suppliant Rome. Every ambition of Attila’s for the recognition of his
power and glory was gratified in this appeal for mercy from the humbled
Empire, from the helpless City which had so long been mistress of the
nations. Leo was at the head of the procession, simple and stately,
representative of the great Christian Church.
“Never to my dying day can I forget that confronting of the worshippers
of the scimitar, the conquerors by force, and the disciple of the
Crucified, the conqueror by the Cross;—one more great incident in the
long warfare between the forces of division and of peace, of good and
evil, as real as that in which ‘Satan as lightning fell from heaven,’ and
perhaps not more silent.
“On one side the great barbaric host of the mighty king who had conquered
and devastated Europe from the Euxine to the Baltic, in all its savage
pomp and pride; on the other, the little company of peace-makers,
led by our Leo, his tall, slight figure arrayed in the pontifical
robes, his abundant silvery hair flowing down from beneath the silken,
gold-embroidered mitre, the purple chasuble, the pallium with the small
red cross on the shoulder and the large red cross on the breast, Roman
courage and dignity blended with sacred majesty in his look and bearing.
For some minutes there was a hush of expectation and suspense; then
followed the brief speech between Attila and Leo. What was said has not
been told. Some report, as no doubt you have heard, that Attila said he
could fight with men, but not with the wolf and the lion (Lupus and Leo).
But I believe and am sure that, whatever he said, Attila felt he was face
to face with a courage nobler than his own, with a Power to save mightier
than his to destroy—felt indeed that he could fight with men, but not
with God.
“And so it was that Leo won the day. The countless hosts of the
destroyers went back with Attila to their own place among their
wildernesses; the little embassy of the peace-makers went back with Leo
to Rome. And Rome is saved.”
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