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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 now 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 and 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 retired 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.