THE LAST EFFORTS OF THE BESIEGED.
We return to the street before the palace. The calamities of the siege
had fallen fiercely on those who lay there during the night. From the
turbulent and ferocious mob of a few hours since, not even the sound of
a voice was now heard. Some, surprised in a paroxysm of hunger by
exhaustion and insensibility, lay with their hands half forced into
their mouths, as if in their ravenous madness they had endeavoured to
prey upon their own flesh. Others now and then wearily opened their
languid eyes upon the street, no longer regardful, in the present
extremity of their sufferings, of the building whose destruction they
had assembled to behold, but watching for a fancied realisation of the
visions of richly spread tables and speedy relief called up before
them, as if in mockery, by the delirium of starvation and disease.
The sun had as yet but slightly risen above the horizon, when the
attention of the few among the populace who still preserved some
perception of outward events was suddenly attracted by the appearance
of an irregular procession--composed partly of citizens and partly of
officers of the Senate, and headed by two men--which slowly approached
from the end of the street leading into the interior of the city. This
assembly of persons stopped opposite Vetranio's palace; and then such
members of the mob who watched them as were not yet entirely abandoned
by hope, heard the inspiring news that the procession they beheld was a
procession of peace, and that the two men who headed it were the
Spaniard, Basilius, a governor of a province, and Johannes, the chief
of the Imperial notaries--appointed ambassadors to conclude a treaty
with the Goths.
As this intelligence reached them, men who had before appeared
incapable of the slightest movement now rose painfully, yet resolutely,
to their feet, and crowded round the two ambassadors as round two
angels descended to deliver them from bondage and death. Meanwhile,
some officers of the Senate, finding the front gates of the palace
closed against them, proceeded to the garden entrance at the back of
the building, to obtain admission to its owner. The absence of
Vetranio and his friends from the deliberations of the government had
been attributed to their disgust at the obstinate and unavailing
resistance offered to the Goths. Now, therefore, when submission had
been resolved upon, it had been thought both expedient and easy to
recall them peremptorily to their duties. In addition to this motive
for seeking the interior of the palace, the servants of the Senate had
another errand to perform there. The widely rumoured determination of
Vetranio and his associates to destroy themselves by fire, in the
frenzy of a last debauch--disbelieved or disregarded while the more
imminent perils of the city were under consideration--became a source
of some apprehension and anxiety to the acting members of the Roman
council, now that their minds were freed from part of the
responsibility which had weighed on them, by their resolution to treat
for peace.
Accordingly, the persons now sent into the palace were charged with the
duty of frustrating its destruction, if such an act had been really
contemplated, as well as the duty of recalling its inmates to their
appointed places in the Senate-house. How far they were enabled, at
the time of their entrance into the banqueting-hall, to accomplish
their double mission, the reader is well able to calculate. They found
Vetranio still in the place which he had occupied since Antonina had
quitted him. Startled by their approach from the stupor which had
hitherto weighed on his faculties, the desperation of his purpose
returned; he made an effort to tear from its place the lamp which still
feebly burned, and to fire the pile in defiance of all opposition. But
his strength, already taxed to the utmost, failed him. Uttering
impotent threats of resistance and revenge, he fell, swooning and
helpless, into the arms of the officers of the Senate who held him
back. One of them was immediately dismissed, while his companions
remained in the palace, to communicate with the leaders of the assembly
outside. His report concluded, the two ambassadors moved slowly onward,
separating themselves from the procession which had accompanied them,
and followed only by a few chosen attendants--a mournful and a degraded
embassy, sent forth by the people who had once imposed their dominion,
their customs, and even their language, on the Eastern and Western
worlds, to bargain with the barbarians whom their fathers had enslaved
for the purchase of a disgraceful peace.
On the departure of the ambassadors, all the spectators still capable
of the effort repaired to the Forum to await their return, and were
joined there by members of the populace from other parts of the city.
It was known that the first intimation of the result of the embassy
would be given from this place; and in the eagerness of their anxiety
to hear it, in the painful intensity of their final hopes of
deliverance, even death itself seemed for a while to be arrested in its
fatal progress through the ranks of the besieged.
In silence and apprehension they counted the tardy moments of delay,
and watched with sickening gaze the shadows lessening and lessening, as
the sun gradually rose in the heavens to the meridian point.
At length, after an absence that appeared of endless duration, the two
ambassadors re-entered Rome. Neither of them spoke as they hurriedly
passed through the ranks of the people; but their looks of terror and
despair were all-eloquent to every beholder--their mission had failed.
For some time no member of the government appeared to have resolution
enough to come forward and harangue the people on the subject of the
unsuccessful embassy. After a long interval, however, the Prefect
Pompeianus himself, urged partly by the selfish entreaties of his
friends, and partly by the childish love of display which still adhered
to him through all his present anxieties and apprehensions, stepped
into one of the lower balconies of the Senate-house to address the
citizens beneath him.
The chief magistrate of Rome was no longer the pompous and portly
personage whose intrusion on Vetranio's privacy during the commencement
of the siege has been described previously. The little superfluous
flesh still remaining on his face hung about it like an ill-fitting
garment; his tones had become lachrymose; the oratorical gestures, with
which he was wont to embellish profusely his former speeches, were all
abandoned; nothing remained of the original man but the bombast of his
language and the impudent complacency of his self-applause, which now
appeared in contemptible contrast to his crestfallen demeanour and his
disheartening narrative of degradation and defeat.
'Men of Rome, let each of you exercise in his own person the heroic
virtues of a Regulus or a Cato!' the prefect began. 'A treaty with the
barbarians is out of our power. It is the scourge of the empire,
Alaric himself, who commands the invading forces! Vain were the
dignified remonstrances of the grave Basilius, futile was the
persuasive rhetoric of the astute Johannes, addressed to the
slaughtering and vainglorious Goth! On their admission to his
presence, the ambassadors, anxious to awe him into a capitulation,
enlarged, with sagacious and commendable patriotism, on the expertness
of the Romans in the use of arms, their readiness for war, and their
vast numbers within the city walls. I blush to repeat the barbarian's
reply. Laughing immoderately, he answered, "The thicker the grass, the
easier it is to cut!"
'Still undismayed, the ambassadors, changing their tactics, talked
indulgently of their willingness to purchase a peace. At this
proposal, his insolence burst beyond all bounds of barbarous arrogance.
"I will not relinquish the siege," he cried, "until I have delivered to
me all the gold and silver in the city, all the household goods in it,
and all the slaves from the northern countries." "What then, O King,
will you leave us?" asked our amazed ambassadors. "YOUR LIVES!"
answered the implacable Goth. Hearing this, even the resolute Basilius
and the wise Johannes despaired. They asked time to communicate with
the Senate, and left the camp of the enemy without further delay. Such
was the end of the embassy; such the arrogant ferocity of the barbarian
foe!'
Here the Prefect paused, from sheer weakness and want of breath. His
oration, however, was not concluded. He had disheartened the people by
his narrative of what had occurred to the ambassadors; he now proceeded
to console them by his relation of what had occurred to himself, when,
after an interval, he thus resumed:--
'But even yet, O citizens of Rome, it is not time to despair! There is
another chance of deliverance still left to us, and that chance has
been discovered by me. It was my lot, during the absence of the
ambassadors, to meet with certain men of Tuscany, who had entered Rome
a few days before the beginning of the siege, and who spoke of a
project for relieving the city which they would communicate to the
Prefect alone. Ever anxious for the public welfare, daring all
treachery from strangers for advantage of my office, I accorded to
these men a secret interview. They told me of a startling and
miraculous event. The town of Neveia, lying, as you well know, in the
direct road of the barbarians when they marched upon Rome, was
protected from their pillaging bands by a tempest of thunder and
lightning terrible to behold. This tempest arose not, as you may
suppose, from an accidental convulsion of the elements, but was
launched over the heads of the invaders by the express interference of
the tutelary deities of the town, invocated by the inhabitants, who
returned in their danger to the practice of their ancient manner of
worship. So said the men of Tuscany; and such pious resources as those
employed by the people of Neveia did they recommend to the people of
Rome! For my part, I acknowledge to you that I have faith in their
project. The antiquity of our former worship is still venerable in my
eyes. The prayers of the priests of our new religion have wrought no
miraculous interference in our behalf: let us therefore imitate the
example of the inhabitants of Neveia, and by the force of our
invocations hurl the thunders of Jupiter on the barbarian camp! Let us
trust for deliverance to the potent interposition of the gods whom our
fathers worshipped--those gods who now, perhaps, avenge themselves for
our desertion of their temples by our present calamities. I go without
delay to propose to the Bishop Innocentius and to the Senate, the
public performance of solemn ceremonies of sacrifice at the Capitol! I
leave you in the joyful assurance that the gods, appeased by our
returning fidelity to our altars, will not refuse the supernatural
protection which they accorded to the people of a provincial town to
the citizens of Rome!'
No sounds either of applause or disapprobation followed the Prefect's
notable proposal for delivering the city from the besiegers by the
public apostasy of the besieged. As he disappeared from their eyes,
the audience turned away speechless. An universal despair now
overpowered in them even the last energies of discord and crime; they
resigned themselves to their doom with the gloomy indifference of
beings in whom all mortal sensations, all human passions, good or evil,
were extinguished. The Prefect departed on his ill-omened expedition
to propose the practice of Paganism to the bishop of a Christian
church; but no profitable effort for relief was even suggested, either
by the government or the people.
And so this day drew in its turn towards a close--more mournful and
more disastrous, more fraught with peril, misery, and gloom, than the
days that had preceded it.
The next morning dawned, but no preparations for the ceremonies of the
ancient worship appeared at the Capitol. The Senate and the bishop
hesitated to incur the responsibility of authorising a public
restoration of Paganism; the citizens, hopeless of succour, heavenly or
earthly, remained unheedful as the dead of all that passed around them.
There was one man in Rome who might have succeeded in rousing their
languid energies to apostasy; but where and how employed was he?
Now, when the opportunity for which he had laboured resolutely, though
in vain, through a long existence of suffering, degradation, and crime,
had gratuitously presented itself more tempting and more favourable
than even he in his wildest visions of success had ever dared to
hope--where was Ulpius? Hidden from men's eyes, like a foul reptile,
in his lurking-place in the deserted temple--now raving round his idols
in the fury of madness, now prostrate before them in idiot
adoration--weaker for the interests of his worship, at the crisis of
its fate, than the weakest child crawling famished through the
streets--the victim of his own evil machinations at the very moment
when they might have led him to triumph--the object of that worst
earthly retribution, by which the wicked are at once thwarted, doomed,
and punished, here as hereafter, through the agency of their own sins.
Three more days passed. The Senate, their numbers fast diminishing in
the pestilence, occupied the time in vain deliberations or in moody
silence. Each morning the weary guards looked forth from the ramparts,
with the fruitless hope of discerning the long-promised legions from
Ravenna on their way to Rome; and each morning devastation and death
gained ground afresh among the hapless besieged.
At length, on the fourth day, the Senate abandoned all hope of further
resistance and determined on submission, whatever might be the result.
It was resolved that another embassy, composed of the whole acting
Senate, and followed by a considerable train, should proceed to Alaric;
that one more effort should be made to induce him to abate his ruinous
demands on the conquered; and that if this failed, the gates should be
thrown open, and the city and the people abandoned to his mercy in
despair.
As soon as the procession of this last Roman embassy was formed in the
Forum, its numbers were almost immediately swelled, in spite of
opposition, by those among the mass of the people who were still able
to move their languid and diseased bodies, and who, in the extremity of
their misery, had determined at all hazards to take advantage of the
opening of the gates, and fly from the city of pestilence in which they
were immured, careless whether they perished on the swords of the Goths
or languished unaided on the open plains. All power of enforcing order
had long since been lost; the few soldiers gathered about the senators
made one abortive effort to drive the people back, and then resigned
any further resistance to their will.
Feebly and silently the spirit-broken assembly now moved along the
great highways, so often trodden, to the roar of martial music and the
shouts of applauding multitudes, by the triumphal processions of
victorious Rome; and from every street, as it passed on, the wasted
forms of the people stole out like spectres to join it.
Among these, as the embassy approached the Pincian Gate, were two,
hurrying forth to herd with their fellow-sufferers, on whose fortunes
in the fallen city our more particular attention has been fixed. To
explain their presence on the scene (if such an explanation be
required) it is necessary to digress for a moment from the progress of
events during the last days of the siege to the morning when Antonina
departed from Vetranio's palace to return with her succour of food and
wine to her father's house.
The reader is already acquainted, from her own short and simple
narrative, with the history of the closing hours of her mournful night
vigil by the side of her sinking parent, and with the motives which
prompted her to seek the palace of the senator, and entreat assistance
in despair from one whom she only remembered as the profligate
destroyer of her tranquility under her father's roof. It is now,
therefore, most fitting to follow her on her way back through the
palace gardens. No living creature but herself trod the grassy paths,
along which she hastened with faltering steps--those paths which she
dimly remembered to have first explored when in former days she
ventured forth to follow the distant sounds of Vetranio's lute.
In spite of her vague, heavy sensations of solitude and grief, this
recollection remained painfully present to her mind, unaccountably
mingled with the dark and dreary apprehension which filled her heart as
she hurried onward, until she once more entered her father's dwelling;
and then, as she again approached his couch, every other feeling became
absorbed in a faint, overpowering fear, lest, after all her
perseverance and success in her errand of filial devotion, she might
have returned too late.
The old man still lived--his weary eyes opened gladly on her, when she
aroused him to partake of the treasured gifts from the senator's
banqueting table. The wretched food which the suicide-guests had
disdained, and the simple flask of wine which they would have
carelessly quaffed at one draught, were viewed both by parent and child
as the saving and invigorating sustenance of many days. After having
consumed as much as they dared of their precarious supply, the
remainder was carefully husbanded. It was the last sign and promise of
life to which they looked--the humble yet precious store in which alone
they beheld the earnest of their security, for a few days longer, from
the pangs of famine and the separation of death.
And now, with their small provision of food and wine set like a beacon
of safety before their sight, a deep, dream-like serenity--the sleep of
the oppressed and wearied faculties--arose over their minds. Under its
mysterious and tranquilising influence, all impressions of the gloom
and misery in the city, of the fatal evidences around them of the
duration of the siege, faded away before their perceptions as dim
retiring objects, which the eye loses in vacancy.
Gradually, as the day of the first unsuccessful embassy declined, their
thoughts began to flow back gently to the world of bygone events which
had crumbled into oblivion beneath the march of time. Her first
recollections of her earliest childhood revived in Antonina's memory,
and then mingled strangely with tearful remembrances of the last words
and looks of the young warrior who had expired by her side, and with
calm, solemn thoughts that the beloved spirit, emancipated from the
sphere of shadows, might now be hovering near the quiet garden-grave
where her bitterest tears of loneliness and affliction had been shed,
or moving around her--an invisible and blessed presence--as she sat at
her father's feet and mourned their earthly separation!
In the emotions thus awakened, there was nothing of bitterness or
agony--they calmed and purified the heart through which they moved.
She could now speak to the old man, for the first time, of her days of
absence from him, of the brief joys and long sorrows of her hours of
exile, without failing in her melancholy tale. Sometimes her father
listened to her in sorrowful and speechless attention; or spoke, when
she paused, of consolation and hope, as she had heard him speak among
his congregation while he was yet strong in his resolution to sacrifice
all things for the reformation of the Church. Sometimes resigning
himself to the influence of his thoughts, as they glided back to the
times that were gone, he again revealed to her the changing events of
his past life--not as before, with unsteady accents and wandering eyes;
but now with a calmness of voice and a coherence of language which
forbade her to doubt the strange and startling narrative that she heard.
Once more he spoke of the image of his lost brother (as he had parted
from him in his boyhood) still present to his mind; of the country that
he had quitted in after years; of the name that he had changed--from
Cleander to Numerian--to foil his former associates, if they still
pursued him; and of the ardent desire to behold again the companion of
his first home, which now, when his daughter was restored to him, when
no other earthly aspiration but this was unsatisfied, remained at the
close of his life, the last longing wish of his heart.
Such was the communion in which father and daughter passed the hours of
their short reprieve from the judgment of famine pronounced against the
city of their sojourn; so did they live, as it were, in a quiet
interval of existence, in a tranquil pause between the toil that is
over and the toil that is to come in the hard labour of life.
But the term to these short days of repose after long suffering and
grief was fast approaching. The little hoard of provision diminished
as rapidly as the stores that had been anxiously collected before it;
and, on the morning of the second embassy to Alaric, the flask of wine
and the bowl of food were both emptied. The brief dream of security
was over and gone; the terrible realities of the struggle for life had
begun again!
Where or to whom could they now turn for help? The siege still
continued; the food just exhausted was the last food that had been left
on the senator's table; to seek the palace again would be to risk
refusal, perhaps insult, as the result of a second entreaty for aid,
where all power of conferring it might now but too surely be lost.
Such were the thoughts of Antonina as she returned the empty bowl to
its former place; but she gave them no expression in words.
She saw, with horror, that the same expression of despair, almost of
frenzy, which had distorted her father's features on the day of her
restoration to him, now marked them again. Once more he tottered
towards the window, murmuring in his bitter despondency against the
delusive security and hope which had held him idle for the interests of
his child during the few days that were past. But, as he now looked
out on the beleaguered city, he saw the populace hastening along the
gloomy street beneath, as rapidly as their wearied limbs would carry
them, to join the embassy. He heard them encouraging each other to
proceed, to seize the last chance of escaping through the open gates
from the horrors of famine and plague; and caught the infection of the
recklessness and despair which had seized his fellow-sufferers from one
end of Rome to the other.
Turning instantly, he grasped his daughter's hand and drew her from the
room, commanding her to come forth with him and join the citizens in
their flight, ere it was too late. Startled by his words and actions,
she vainly endeavoured, as she obeyed, to impress her father with the
dread of the Goths which her own bitter experience taught her to feel,
now that her only protector among them lay cold in the grave. With
Numerian, as with the rest of the people, all apprehension, all doubt,
all exercise of reason, was overpowered by the one eager idea of
escaping from the fatal precincts of Rome.
So they mingled with the throng, herding affrightedly together in the
rear of the embassy, and followed in their ranks as best they might.
The sun shone down brightly from the pure blue sky; the wind bore into
the city the sharp threatening notes of the trumpets from the Gothic
camp, as the Pincian Gate was opened to the ambassadors and their
train. With one accord the crowd instantly endeavoured to force their
way out after them in a mass; but they now moved in a narrow space, and
were opposed by a large reinforcement of the city guard. After a short
struggle they were overpowered, and the gates were closed. Some few of
the strongest and the foremost of their numbers succeeded in following
the ambassadors; the greater part, however, remained on the inner side
of the gate, pressing closely up to it in their impatience and despair,
like prisoners awaiting their deliverance, or preparing to force their
escape.
Among these, feeblest amid the most feeble, were Numerian and Antonina,
hemmed in by the surrounding crowd, and shut out either from flight
from the city or a return to home.