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.
Not 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 song 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.