THE GRAVE AND THE CAMP.
While the second and last embassy from the Senate proceeds towards the
tent of the Gothic king, while the streets of Rome are deserted by all
but the dead, and the living populace crowd together in speechless
expectation behind the barrier of the Pincian Gate, an opportunity is
at length afforded of turning our attention towards a scene from which
it has been long removed. Let us now revisit the farm-house in the
suburbs, and look once more on the quiet garden and on Hermanric's
grave.
The tranquility of the bright warm day is purest around the retired
path leading to the little dwelling. Here the fragrance of wild flowers
rises pleasantly from the waving grass; the lulling, monotonous hum of
insect life pervades the light, steady air; the sunbeams, intercepted
here and there by the clustering trees, fall in irregular patches of
brightness on the shady ground; and, saving the birds which
occasionally pass overhead, singing in their flight, no living creature
appears on the quiet scene, until, gaining the wicket-gate which leads
into the farm-house garden, we look forth upon the prospect within.
There, following the small circular footpath which her own persevering
steps have day by day already traced, appears the form of a solitary
woman, pacing slowly about the mound of grassy earth which marks the
grave of the young Goth.
For some time she proceeds on her circumscribed round with as much
undeviating, mechanical regularity, as if beyond that narrow space rose
a barrier which caged her from ever setting foot on the earth beyond.
At length she pauses in her course when it brings her nearest to the
wicket, advances a few steps towards it, then recedes, and recommences
her monotonous progress, and then again breaking off on her round,
finally succeeds in withdrawing herself from the confines of the grave,
passes through the gate, and following the path to the high-road,
slowly proceeds towards the eastern limits of the Gothic camp. The
fixed, ghastly, unfeminine expression on her features marks her as the
same woman whom we last beheld as the assassin at the farm-house, but
beyond this she is hardly recognisable again. Her formerly powerful
and upright frame is bent and lean; her hair waves in wild, white locks
about her shrivelled face; all the rude majesty of her form has
departed; there is nothing to show that it is still Goisvintha haunting
the scene of her crime but the savage expression debasing her
countenance and betraying the evil heart within, unsubdued as ever in
its yearning for destruction and revenge.
Since the period when we last beheld her, removed in the custody of the
Huns from the dead body of her kinsman, the farm-house had been the
constant scene of her pilgrimage from the camp, the chosen refuge where
she brooded in solitude over her fierce desires. Scorning to punish a
woman whom he regarded as insane for an absence from the tents of the
Goths which was of no moment wither to the army or to himself, Alaric
had impatiently dismissed her from his presence when she was brought
before him. The soldiers who had returned to bury the body of their
chieftain in the garden of the farm-house, found means to inform her
secretly of the charitable act which they had performed at their own
peril, but beyond this no further intercourse was held with her by any
of her former associates.
All her actions favoured their hasty belief that her faculties were
disordered, and others shunned her as she shunned them. Her daily
allowance of food was left for her to seek at a certain place in the
camp, as it might have been left for an animal too savage to be
cherished by the hand of man. At certain periods she returned secretly
from her wanderings to take it. Her shelter for the night was not the
shelter of her people before the walls of Rome; her thoughts were not
their thoughts. Widowed, childless, friendless, the assassin of her
last kinsman, she moved apart in her own secret world of bereavement,
desolation, and crime.
Yet there was no madness, no remorse for her share in accomplishing the
fate of Hermanric, in the dark and solitary existence which she now
led. From the moment when the young warrior had expiated with his death
his disregard of the enmities of his nation and the wrongs of his
kindred, she thought of him only as of one more victim whose dishonour
and ruin she must live to requite on the Romans with Roman blood, and
matured her schemes of revenge with a stern resolution which time, and
solitude, and bodily infirmity were all powerless to disturb.
She would pace for hours and hours together, in the still night and in
the broad noonday, round and round the warrior's grave, nursing her
vengeful thoughts within her, until a ferocious anticipation of triumph
quickened her steps and brightened her watchful eyes. Then she would
enter the farm-house, and, drawing the knife from its place of
concealment in her garments, would pass its point slowly backwards and
forwards over the hearth on which she had mutilated Hermanric with her
own hand, and from which he had advanced, without a tremor, to meet the
sword-points of the Huns. Sometimes, when darkness had gathered over
the earth, she would stand--a boding and menacing apparition--upon the
grave itself, and chaunt, moaning to the moaning wind, fragments of
obscure Northern legends, whose hideous burden was ever of anguish and
crime, of torture in prison vaults, and death by the annihilating
sword--mingling with them the gloomy story of the massacre at Aquileia,
and her fierce vows of vengeance against the households of Rome. The
forager, on his late return past the farm-house to the camp, heard the
harsh, droning accents of her voice, and quickened his onward step.
The venturesome peasant from the country beyond, approaching under
cover of the night to look from afar on the Gothic camp, beheld her
form, shadowy and threatening, as he neared the garden, and fled
affrighted from the place. Neither stranger nor friend intruded on her
dread solitude. The foul presence of cruelty and crime violated
undisturbed the scenes once sacred to the interests of tenderness and
love, once hallowed by the sojourn of youth and beauty!
But now the farm-house garden is left solitary, the haunting spirit of
evil has departed from the grave, the footsteps of Goisvintha have
traced to their close the same paths from the suburbs over which the
young Goth once eagerly hastened on his night journey of love; and
already the walls of Rome rise--dark, near, and hateful--before her
eyes. Along these now useless bulwarks of the fallen city she wanders,
as she has often wandered before, watching anxiously for the first
opening of the long-closed gates. Let us follow her on her way.
Her attention was now fixed only on the broad ramparts, while she
passed slowly along the Gothic tents towards the encampment at the
Pincian Gate. Arrived there, she was aroused for the first time from
her apathy by an unwonted stir and confusion prevailing around her.
She looked towards the tent of Alaric, and beheld before it the wasted
and crouching forms of the followers of the embassy awaiting their
sentence from the captain of the Northern hosts. In a few moments she
gathered enough from the words of the Goths congregated about this part
of the camp to assure her that it was the Pincian Gate which had given
egress to the Roman suppliants, and which would therefore, in all
probability, be the entrance again thrown open to admit their return to
the city. Remembering this, she began to calculate the numbers of the
conquered enemy grouped together before the king's tent, and then
mentally added to them those who might be present at the interview
proceeding within--mechanically withdrawing herself, while thus
occupied, nearer and nearer to the waste ground before the city walls.
Gradually she turned her face towards Rome: she was realising a daring
purpose, a fatal resolution, long cherished during the days and nights
of her solitary wanderings. 'The ranks of the embassy,' she muttered,
in a deep, thoughtful tone, 'are thickly filled. Where there are many
there must be confusion and haste; they march together, and know not
their own numbers; they mark not one more or one less among them.'
She stopped. Strange and dark changes of colour and expression passed
over her ghastly features. She drew from her bosom the bloody
helmet-crest of her husband, which had never quitted her since the day
of his death; her face grew livid under an awful expression of rage,
ferocity, and despair, as she gazed on it. Suddenly she looked up at
the city--fierce and defiant, as if the great walls before her were
mortal enemies against whom she stood at bay in the death-struggle.
'The widowed and the childless shall drink of thy blood!' she cried,
stretching out her skinny hand towards Rome, 'though the armies of her
nation barter their wrongs with thy people for bags of silver and gold!
I have pondered on it in my solitude, and dreamed of it in my dreams!
I have sworn that I would enter Rome, and avenge my slaughtered
kindred, alone among thousands! Now, now, I will hold to my oath!
Thou blood-stained city of the coward and the traitor, the enemy of the
defenceless, and the murderer of the weak! thou who didst send forth to
Aquileia the slayers of my husband and the assassins of my children, I
wait no longer before thy walls! This day will I mingle, daring all
things, with thy returning citizens and penetrate, amid Romans, the
gates of Rome! Through the day will I lurk, cunning and watchful, in
thy solitary haunts, to steal forth on thee at nights, a secret
minister of death! I will watch for thy young and thy weak once in
unguarded places; I will prey, alone in the thick darkness, upon thy
unprotected lives; I will destroy thy children, as their fathers
destroyed at Aquileia the children of the Goths! Thy rabble will
discover me and arise against me; they will tear me in pieces and
trample my mangled body on the pavement of the streets; but it will be
after I have seen the blood that I have sworn to shed flowing under my
knife! My vengeance will be complete, and torments and death will be
to me as guests that I welcome, and as deliverers whom I await!'
Again she paused--the wild triumph of the fanatic on the burning pile
was flashing in her face--suddenly her eyes fell once more upon the
stained helmet-crest; then her expression changed again to despair, and
her voice grew low and moaning, when she thus resumed:--
'I am weary of my life; when the vengeance is done I shall be delivered
from this prison of the earth--in the world of shadows I shall see my
husband, and my little ones will gather round my knees again. The
living have no part in me; I yearn towards the spirits who wander in
the halls of the dead.'
For a few minutes more she continued to fix her tearless eyes on the
helmet-crest. But soon the influence of the evil spirit revived in all
its strength; she raised her head suddenly, remained for an instant
absorbed in deep thought, then began to retrace her steps rapidly in
the direction by which she had come.
Sometimes she whispered softly, 'I must be doing ere the time fail me:
my face must be hidden and my garments changed. Yonder, among the
houses, I must search, and search quickly!' Sometimes she reiterated
her denunciations of vengeance, her ejaculations of triumph in her
frantic project. At the recapitulation of these the remembrance of
Antonina was aroused; and then a bloodthirsty superstition darkened her
thoughts, and threw a vague and dreamy character over her speech.
When she spoke now, it was to murmur to herself that the victim who had
twice escaped her might yet be alive; that the supernatural influences
which had often guided the old Goths, on the day of retribution, might
still guide her; might still direct the stroke of her destroying
weapon--the last stroke ere she was discovered and slain--straight to
the girl's heart.
Thoughts such as these--wandering and obscure--arose in close, quick
succession within her; but whether she gave them expression in word and
action, or whether she suppressed them in silence, she never wavered or
halted in her rapid progress. Her energies were braced to all
emergencies, and her strong will suffered them not for an instant to
relax.
She gained a retired street in the deserted suburbs, and looking round
to see that she was unobserved, entered on of the houses abandoned by
its inhabitants on the approach of the besiegers. Passing quickly
through the outer halls, she stopped at length in one of the sleeping
apartments; and here she found, among other possessions left behind in
the flight, the store of wearing apparel belonging to the owner of the
room.
From this she selected a Roman robe, upper mantle, and sandals--the
most common in colour and texture that she could find--and folding them
up into the smallest compass, hid them under her own garments. Then,
avoiding all those whom she met on her way, she returned in the
direction of the king's tent; but when she approached it, branched off
stealthily towards Rome, until she reached a ruined building half-way
between the city and the camp. In this concealment she clothed herself
in her disguise, drawing the mantle closely round her head and face;
and from this point--calm, vigilant, determined, her hand on the knife
beneath her robe, her lips muttering the names of her murdered husband
and children--she watched the high-road to the Pincian Gate.
There for a short time let us leave her, and enter the tent of Alaric,
while the Senate yet plead before the Arbiter of the Empire for mercy
and peace.
At the moment of which we write, the embassy had already exhausted its
powers of intercession, apparently without moving the leader of the
Goths from his first pitiless resolution of fixing the ransom of Rome
at the price of every possession of value which the city contained.
There was a momentary silence now in the great tent. At one extremity
of it, congregated in a close and irregular group, stood the wearied
and broken-spirited members of the Senate, supported by such of their
attendants as had been permitted to follow them; at the other appeared
the stately forms of Alaric and the warriors who surrounded him as his
council of war. The vacant space in the middle of the tent was strewn
with martial weapons, separating the representatives of the two nations
one from the other; and thus accidentally, yet palpably, typifying the
fierce hostility which had sundered in years past, and was still to
sunder for years to come, the people of the North and the people of the
South.
The Gothic king stood a little in advance of his warriors, leaning on
his huge, heavy sword. His steady eye wandered from man to man among
the broken-spirited senators, contemplating, with cold and cruel
penetration, all that suffering and despair had altered for the worse
in their outward appearance. Their soiled robes, their wan cheeks,
their trembling limbs were each marked in turn by the cool, sarcastic
examination of the conqueror's gaze. Debased and humiliated as they
were, there were some among the ambassadors who felt the insult thus
silently and deliberately inflicted on them the more keenly for their
very helplessness. They moved uneasily in their places, and whispered
among each other in low and bitter accents.
At length one of their number raised his downcast eyes and broke the
silence. The old Roman spirit, which long years of voluntary frivolity
and degradation had not yet entirely depraved, flushed his pale, wasted
face as he spoke thus:--
'We have entreated, we have offered, we have promised--men can do no
more! Deserted by our Emperor and crushed by pestilence and famine,
nothing is now left to us but to perish in unavailing resistance
beneath the walls of Rome! It was in the power of Alaric to win
everlasting renown by moderation to the unfortunate of an illustrious
nation; but he has preferred to attempt the spoiling of a glorious city
and the subjugation of a suffering people! Yet let him remember,
though destruction may sate his vengeance, and pillage enrich his
hoards, the day of retribution will yet come. There are still soldiers
in the empire, and heroes who will lead them confidently to battle,
though the bodies of their countrymen lie slaughtered around them in
the streets of pillaged Rome!'
A momentary expression of wrath and indignation appeared on Alaric's
features as he listened to this bold speech; but it was almost
immediately replaced by a scornful smile of derision.
'What! ye have still soldiers before whom the barbarian must tremble
for his conquests!' he cried. 'Where are they? Are they on their
march, or in ambush, or hiding behind strong walls, or have they lost
their way on the road to the Gothic camp? Ha! here is one of them!' he
exclaimed, advancing towards an enfeebled and disarmed guard of the
Senate, who quailed beneath his fierce glance. 'Fight, man!' he loudly
continued; 'fight while there is yet time, for imperial Rome! Thy
sword is gone--take mine, and be a hero again!'
With a rough laugh, echoed by the warriors behind him, he flung his
ponderous weapon as he spoke towards the wretched object of his
sarcasm. The hilt struck heavily against the man's breast; he staggered
and fell helpless to the ground. The laugh was redoubled among the
Goths; but now their leader did not join in it. His eye glowed in
triumphant scorn as he pointed to the prostrate Roman, exclaiming--
'So does the South fall beneath the sword of the North! So shall the
empire bow before the rule of the Goth! Say, as ye look on these
Romans before us, are we not avenged of our wrongs? They die not
fighting on our swords; they live to entreat our pity, as children that
are in terror of the whip!'
He paused. His massive and noble countenance gradually assumed a
thoughtful expression. The ambassadors moved forward a few
steps--perhaps to make a final entreaty, perhaps to depart in despair;
but he signed with his hand in command to them to be silent and remain
where they stood. The marauder's thirst for present plunder, and the
conqueror's lofty ambition of future glory, now stirred in strong
conflict within him. He walked to the opening of the tent, and
thrusting aside its curtain of skins, looked out upon Rome in silence.
The dazzling majesty of the temples and palaces of the mighty city, as
they towered before him, gleaming in the rays of the unclouded
sunlight, fixed him long in contemplation. Gradually, dreams of a
future dominion amid those unrivalled structures, which now waited but
his word to be pillaged and destroyed, filled his aspiring soul, and
saved the city from his wrath. He turned again toward the shrinking
ambassadors--in a voice and look superior to them as a being of a
higher sphere--and spoke thus:--
'When the Gothic conqueror reigns in Italy, the palaces of her rulers
shall be found standing for the places of his sojourn. I will ordain a
lower ransom; I will spare Rome.'
A murmur arose among the warriors behind him. The rapine and
destruction which they had eagerly anticipated was denied them for the
first time by their chief. As their muttered remonstrances caught his
ear, Alaric instantly and sternly fixed his eyes upon them; and,
repeating in accents of deliberate command, 'I will ordain a lower
ransom; I will spare Rome,' steadily scanned the countenances of his
ferocious followers.
Not a word of dissent fell from their lips; not a gesture of impatience
appeared in their ranks; they preserved perfect silence as the king
again advanced towards the ambassadors and continued--
'I fix the ransom of the city at five thousand pounds of gold; at
thirty thousand pounds of silver.'
Here he suddenly ceased, as if pondering further on the terms he should
exact. The hearts of the Senate, lightened for a moment by Alaric's
unexpected announcement that he would moderate his demands, sank within
them again as they thought on the tribute required of them, and
remembered their exhausted treasury. But it was no time now to
remonstrate or to delay; and they answered with one accord, ignorant
though they were of the means of performing their promise, 'The ransom
shall be paid.'
The king looked at them when they spoke, as if in astonishment that men
whom he had deprived of all freedom of choice ventured still to assert
it by intimating their acceptance of terms which they dared not
decline. The mocking spirit revived within him while he thus gazed on
the helpless and humiliated embassy; and he laughed once more as he
resumed, partly addressing himself to the silent array of the warriors
behind him--
'The gold and silver are but the first dues of the tribute; my army
shall be rewarded with more than the wealth of the enemy. You men of
Rome have laughed at our rough bearskins and our heavy armour, you
shall clothe us with your robes of festivity! I will add to the gold
and silver of your ransom, four thousand garments of silk, and three
thousand pieces of scarlet cloth. My barbarians shall be barbarians no
longer! I will make patricians, epicures, Romans of them!'
The members of the ill-fated embassy looked up as he paused, in mute
appeal to the mercy of the triumphant conqueror; but they were not yet
to be released from the crushing infliction of his rapacity and scorn.
'Hold!' he cried, 'I will have more--more still! You are a nation of
feasters;--we will rival you in your banquets when we have stripped you
of your banqueting robes! To the gold, the silver, the silk, and the
cloth, I will add yet more--three thousand pounds weight of pepper,
your precious merchandise, bought from far countries with your lavish
wealth!--see that you bring it hither, with the rest of the ransom, to
the last grain! The flesh of our beasts shall be seasoned for us like
the flesh of yours!'
He turned abruptly from the senators as he pronounced the last words,
and began to speak in jesting tones and in the Gothic language to the
council of warriors around him. Some of the ambassadors bowed their
heads in silent resignation; others, with the utter thoughtlessness of
men bewildered by all that they had seen and heard during the interview
that was now close, unhappily revived the recollection of the broken
treaties of former days, by mechanically inquiring, in the terms of
past formularies, what security the besiegers would require for the
payment of their demands.
'Security!' cried Alaric fiercely, instantly relapsing as they spoke
into his sterner mood. 'Behold yonder the future security of the Goths
for the faith of Rome!' and flinging aside the curtain of the tent, he
pointed proudly to the long lines of his camp, stretching round all
that was visible of the walls of the fallen city.
The ambassadors remembered the massacre of the hostages of Aquileia,
and the evasion of the payment of tribute-money promised in former
days, and were silent as they looked through the opening of the tent.
'Remember the conditions of the ransom,' pursued Alaric in warning
tones, 'remember my security that the ransom shall be quickly paid! So
shall you live for a brief space in security, and feast and be merry
again while your territories yet remain to you. Go! I have spoken--it
is enough!'
He withdrew abruptly from the senators, and the curtain of the tent
fell behind them as they passed out. The ordeal of the judgment was
over; the final sentence had been pronounced; the time had already
arrived to go forth and obey it.
The news that terms of peace had been at last settled filled the Romans
who were waiting before the tent with emotions of delight, equally
unalloyed by reflections on the past or forebodings for the future.
Barred from their reckless project of flying to the open country by the
Goths surrounding them in the camp, shut out from retreating to Rome by
the gates through which they had rashly forced their way, exposed in
their helplessness to the brutal jeers of the enemy while they waited
in a long agony of suspense for the close of the perilous interview
between Alaric and the Senate, they had undergone every extremity of
suffering, and had yielded unanimously to despair when the intelligence
of the concluded treaty sounded like a promise of salvation in their
ears.
None of the apprehensions aroused in the minds of their superiors by
the vastness of the exacted tribute now mingled with the unreflecting
ecstasy of their joy at the prospect of the removal of the blockade.
They arose to return to the city from which they had fled in dismay,
with cries of impatience and delight. They fawned like dogs upon the
ambassadors, and even upon the ferocious Goths. On their departure
from Rome they had mechanically preserved some regularity in their
progress, but now they hurried onward without distinction of place or
discipline of march--senators, guards, plebeians, all were huddled
together in the disorderly equality of a mob.
Not one of them, in their new-born security, marked the ruined building
on the high-road; not one of them observed the closely-robed figure
that stole out from it to join them in their rear; and then, with
stealthy footstep and shrouded face, soon mingled in the thickest of
their ranks. The attention of the ambassadors was still engrossed by
their forebodings of failure in collecting the ransom; the eyes of the
people were fixed only on the Pincian Gate; their ears were open to no
sounds but their own ejaculations of delight. Not one disguised
stranger only, but many, might now have joined them in their tumultuous
progress, alike unquestioned and unobserved.
So they hastily re-entered the city, where thousands of heavy eyes were
strained to look on them, and thousands of attentive ears drank in
their joyful news from the Gothic camp. Then were heard in all
directions the sounds of hysterical weeping and idiotic laughter, the
low groans of the weak who died victims of their sudden transport, and
the confused outbursts of the strong who had survived all extremities,
and at last beheld their deliverance in view.
Still silent and serious, the ambassadors now slowly penetrated the
throng on their way back to the Forum; and as they proceeded the crowd
gradually dispersed on either side of them. Enemies, friends, and
strangers, all whom the ruthless famine had hitherto separated in
interests and sympathies, were now united together as one family, by
the expectation of speedy relief.
But there was one among the assembly that was now separating who stood
alone in her unrevealed emotions, amid the rejoicing thousands around
her. The women and children in the throng, as, preoccupied by their
own feeling, they unheedfully passed her by, saw not the eager,
ferocious attention in her eyes, as she watched them steadily till they
were out of sight. Within their gates the stranger and the enemy
waited for the treacherous darkness of night, and waited unobserved.
Where she had first stood when the thick crowd hemmed her in, there she
still continued to stand after they slowly moved past her and space
grew free.
Yet beneath this outward calm and silence lurked the wildest passions
that ever raged against the weak restraint of human will; even the firm
self-possession of Goisvintha was shaken when she found herself within
the walls of Rome.
No glance of suspicion had been cast upon her; not one of the crowd had
approached to thrust her back when she passed through the gates with
the heedless citizens around her. Shielded from detection, as much by
the careless security of her enemies as by the stratagem of her
disguise, she stood on the pavement of Rome, as she had vowed to stand,
afar from the armies of her people--alone as an avenger of blood!
It was no dream; no fleeting, deceitful vision. The knife was under
her hand; the streets stretched before her; the living beings who
thronged them were Romans; the hours of the day were already on the
wane; the approach of her vengeance was as sure as the approach of
darkness that was to let it loose. A wild exultation quickened in her
the pulses of life, while she thought on the dread projects of secret
assassination and revenge which now opposed her, a solitary woman, in
deadly enmity against the defenceless population of a whole city.
As her eyes travelled slowly from side to side over the moving throng;
as she thought on the time that might still elapse ere the discovery
and death--the martyrdom in the cause of blood--which she expected and
defied, would overtake her, her hands trembled beneath her robe, and
she reiterated in whispers to herself: 'Husband, children,
brother--there are five deaths to avenge! Remember Aquileia! Remember
Aquileia!'
Suddenly, as she looked from group to group among the departing people,
her eyes became arrested by one object; she instantly stepped forwards,
then abruptly restrained herself and moved back where the crowd was
still thick, gazing fixedly ever in the same direction. She saw the
victim twice snatched from her hands--at the camp and in the
farm-house--a third time offered to her grasp in the streets of Rome.
The chance of vengeance last expected was the chance that had first
arrived. A vague, oppressing sensation of awe mingled with the triumph
at her heart--a supernatural guidance seemed to be directing her with
fell rapidity, through every mortal obstacle, to the climax of her
revenge!
She screened herself behind the people; she watched the girl from the
most distant point; but concealment was now vain--their eyes had met.
The robe had slipped aside when she suddenly stepped forward, and in
that moment Antonina had seen her.
Numerian, moving slowly with his daughter through the crowd, felt her
hand tighten round his, and saw her features stiffen into sudden
rigidity; but the change was only for an instant. Ere he could speak,
she caught him by the arm, and drew him forward with convulsive energy.
Then, in accents hardly articulate, low, breathless, unlike her wonted
voice, he heard her exclaim, as she struggled on with him, 'She is
there--there behind us! to kill me, as she killed him! Home! home!'
Exhausted already, through long weakness and natural infirmity, by the
rough contact of the crowd, bewildered by Antonina's looks and actions,
and by the startling intimation of unknown peril, conveyed to him in
her broken exclamations of affright, Numerian's first impulse, as he
hurried onward by her side, led him to entreat protection and help from
the surrounding populace. But even could he have pointed out to them
the object of his dread amid that motley throng of all nations, the
appeal he now made would have remained unanswered.
Of all the results of the frightful severity of privation suffered by
the besieged, none were more common than those mental aberrations which
produced visions of danger, enemies, and death, so palpable as to make
the persons beholding them implore assistance against the hideous
creation of their own delirium. Accordingly, most of those to whom the
entreaties of Numerian were addressed passed without noticing them.
Some few carelessly bid him remember that there were no enemies now;
that the days of peace were approaching; and that a meal of good food,
which he might soon expect to enjoy, was the only help for a famished
man. No one, in that period of horror and suffering, which was now
drawing to a close, saw anything extraordinary in the confusion of the
father and the terror of the child. So they pursued their feeble
flight unprotected, and the footsteps of Goisvintha followed them as
they went.
They had already commenced the ascent of the Pincian Hill, when
Antonina stopped abruptly, and turned to look behind her. Many people
yet thronged the street below; but her eyes penetrated among them,
sharpened by peril, and instantly discerned the ample robe and the tall
form, still at the same distance from them, and pausing as they had
paused. For one moment, the girl's eyes fixed in the wild, helpless
stare of terror on her father's face; but the next, that mysterious
instinct of preservation, which is co-existent with the instinct of
fear--which gifts the weakest animal with cunning to improve its
flight, and takes the place of reason, reflection, and resolve, when
all are banished from the mind--warned her against the fatal error of
permitting the pursuer to track her to her home.
'Not there! not there!' she gasped faintly as Numerian endeavoured to
lead her up the ascent. 'She will see us as we enter the
doors!--through the streets! Oh, father, if you would save me! we may
lose her in the streets!--the guards, the people are there! Back!
back!'
Numerian trembled as he marked the terror in her looks and gestures;
but it was vain to question or oppose her. Nothing short of force
could restrain her,--no commands or entreaties could draw from her more
than the same breathless exclamation: 'Onward, father; onward, if you
would save me!' She was insensible to every sensation but fear,
incapable of any other exertion than flight.
Turning and winding, hurrying forward ever at the same rapid pace, they
passed unconsciously along the intricate streets that led to the river
side; and still the avenger tracked the victim, constant as the shadow
to the substance; steady, vigilant, unwearied, as a bloodhound on a hot
scent.
And now, even the sound of the father's voice ceased to be audible in
the daughter's ears; she no longer felt the pressure of his hand, no
longer perceived his very presence at her side. At length, frail and
shrinking, she again paused, and looked back. The street they had
reached was very tranquil and desolate: two slaves were walking at its
further extremity. While they were in sight, no living creature
appeared in the roadway behind; but as soon as they had passed away, a
shadow stole slowly forward over the pavement of a portico in the
distance, and the next moment Goisvintha appeared in the street.
The sun glared down fiercely over her dark figure as she stopped and
for an instant looked stealthily around her. She moved to advance, and
Antonina saw no more. Again she turned to renew her hopeless flight;
and again her father--perceiving only as the mysterious cause of her
dread a solitary woman, who, though she followed, attempted not to
arrest, or even to address them--prepared to accompany her to the last,
in despair of all other chances of securing her safety.
More and more completely did her terror now enchain her faculties, as
she still unconsciously traced her rapid way through the streets that
led to the Tiber. It was not Numerian, not Rome, not daylight in a
great city, that was before her eyes: it was the storm, the
assassination, the night at the farm-house, that she now lived through
over again.
Still the quick flight and the ceaseless pursuit were continued, as if
neither were ever to have an end; but the close of the scene was,
nevertheless, already at hand. During the interval of the passage
through the streets, Numerian's mind had gradually recovered from its
first astonishment and alarm; at length he perceived the necessity of
instant and decisive action, while there was yet time to save Antonina
from sinking under the excess of her own fears. Though a vague, awful
foreboding of disaster and death filled his heart, his resolution to
penetrate at once, at all hazards, the dark mystery of impending danger
indicated by his daughter's words and actions, did not fail him; for it
was aroused by the only motive powerful enough to revive all that
suffering and infirmity had not yet destroyed of the energy of his
former days--the preservation of his child. There was something of the
old firmness and vigour of the intrepid reformer of the Church, in his
dim eyes, as he now stopped, and enclosing Antonina in his arms,
arrested her instantly in her flight.
She struggled to escape; but it was faintly, and only for a moment.
Her strength and consciousness were beginning to abandon her. She
never attempted to look back; she felt in her heart that Goisvintha was
still behind, and dared not to verify the frightful conviction with her
eyes. Her lips moved; but they expressed an altered and a vain
petition: 'Hermanric! O Hermanric!' was all they murmured now.
They had arrived at the long street that ran by the banks of the Tiber.
The people had either retired to their homes or repaired to the Forum
to be informed of the period when the ransom would be paid. No one but
Goisvintha was in sight as Numerian looked around him; and she, after
having carefully viewed the empty street, was advancing towards them at
a quickened pace.
For an instant the father looked on her steadily as she approached, and
in that instant his determination was formed. A flight of steps at his
feet led to the narrow doorway of a small temple, the nearest building
to him.
Ignorant whether Goisvintha might not be secretly supported by
companions in her ceaseless pursuit, he resolved to secure this place
for Antonina, as a temporary refuge at least; while standing before it,
he should oblige the woman to declare her purpose, if she followed them
even there. In a moment he had begun the ascent of the steps, with the
exhausted girl by his side. Arrived at the summit, he guided her
before him into the doorway, and stopped on the threshold to look round
again. Goisvintha was nowhere to be seen.
Not duped by the woman's sudden disappearance into the belief that she
had departed from the street--persisting in his resolution to lead his
daughter to a place of repose, where she might most immediately feel
herself secure, and might therefore most readily recover her
self-possession, Numerian drew Antonina with him into the temple. He
lingered there for a moment, ere he departed to watch the street from
the portico outside.
The light in the building was dim,--it was admitted only from a small
aperture in the roof, and through the narrow doorway, where it was
intercepted by the overhanging bulk of the outer portico. A crooked
pile of dark heavy-looking substances on the floor, rose high towards
the ceiling in the obscure interior. Irregular in form, flung together
one over the other in strange disorder, for the most part dusky in hue,
yet here and there gleaming at points with a metallic brightness, these
objects presented a mysterious, indefinite, and startling appearance.
It was impossible, on a first view of their confused arrangement, to
discover what they were, or to guess for what purpose they could have
been pile together on the floor of a deserted temple. From the moment
when they had first attracted Numerian's observation, his attention was
fixed on them, and as he looked a faint thrill of suspicion--vague,
inexplicable, without apparent cause or object--struck chill to his
heart.
He had moved a step forward to examine the hidden space at the back of
the pile, when his further advance was instantly stopped by the
appearance of a man who walked forth from it dressed in the floating,
purple-edged robe and white fillet of the Pagan priests. Before either
father or daughter could speak, even before they could move to depart,
he stepped up to them, and, placing his hand on the shoulder of each,
confronted them in silence.
At the moment when the stranger approached, Numerian raised his hand to
thrust him back, and, in so doing, fixed his eyes on the man's
countenance, as a ray of light from the doorway floated over it.
Instantly his arm remained outstretched and rigid, then it dropped to
his side, and the expression of horror on the face of the child became
reflected, as it were, on the face of the parent. Neither moved under
the hand of the dweller in the temple when he laid it heavily on each,
and both stood before him speechless as himself.