RETRIBUTION.
As, in the progress of Life, each man pursues his course with the
passions, good and evil, set, as it were, on either side of him; and
viewing their results in the actions of his fellow-men, finds his
attention, while still attracted by the spectacle of what is noble and
virtuous, suddenly challenged by the opposite display of what is mean
and criminal--so, in the progress of this narrative, which aims to be
the reflection of Life, the reader who has journeyed with us thus far,
and who may now be inclined to follow the little procession of
Christian devotees, to walk by the side of the afflicted father, and to
hold with him the hand of his ill-fated child, is yet, in obedience to
the conditions of the story, required to turn back for awhile to the
contemplation of its darker passages of guilt and terror--he must enter
the temple again; but he will enter it for the last time.
The scene before the altar of idols was fast proceeding to its fatal
climax.
The Pagan's frenzy had exhausted itself in its own fury--his insanity
was assuming a quieter and a more dangerous form; his eye grew cunning
and suspicious; a stealthy deliberation and watchfulness appeared in
all his actions. He now slowly lifted his foot from Goisvintha's
breast, and raised his hands at the same time to strike her back if she
should attempt to escape. Seeing that she lay senseless from her fall,
he left her; retired to one of the corners of the temple, took from it
a rope that lay there, and returning, bound her arms behind her at the
hands and wrists. The rope cut deep through the skin--the pain
restored her to her senses; she suffered the sharp agony in her own
body, in the same place where she had inflicted it on the young
chieftain at the farm-house beyond the suburbs.
The minute after, she felt herself dragged along the ground, farther
into the interior of the building. The madman drew her up to the iron
gates of the passage through the partition, and fastening the end of
the rope to them, left her there. This part of the temple was
enveloped in total darkness--her assailant addressed not a word to
her--she could not obtain even a glimpse of his form, but she could
hear him still laughing to himself in hoarse, monotonous tones, that
sounded now near, and now distant again.
She abandoned herself as lost--prematurely devoted to the torment and
death that she had anticipated; but, as yet, her masculine resolution
and energy did not decline. The very intensity of the anguish she
suffered from the bindings at her wrists, producing a fierce bodily
effort to resist it, strengthened her iron-strung nerves. She neither
cried for help nor appealed to the Pagan for pity. The gloomy fatalism
which she had inherited from her savage ancestors sustained her in a
suicide-pride.
Ere long the laughter of Ulpius, while he moved slowly hither and
thither in the darkness of the temple, was overpowered by the sound of
her voice--deep, groaning, but yet steady--as she uttered her last
words--words poured forth like the wild dirges, the fierce death-songs
of the old Goths when they died deserted on the bloody battle-field, or
were cast bound into deep dungeons, a prey to the viper and the asp.
Thus she spoke:-- 'I swore to be avenged! while I went forth from
Aquileia with the child that was killed and the child that was wounded;
while I climbed the high wall in the night-time, and heard the tumult
of the beating waves near the bank where I buried the dead; while I
wandered in the darkness over the naked heath and through the lonely
forest; while I climbed the pathless sides of the mountains, and made
my refuge in the cavern by the waters of the dark lake.
'I swore to be avenged! while the warriors approached me on their
march, and the roaring of the trumpets and the clash of the armour
sounded in my ears; while I greeted my kinsman, Hermanric, a mighty
chieftain, at the king's side, among the invading hosts; while I looked
on my last child, dead like the rest, and knew that he was buried afar
from the land of his people, and from the others that the Romans had
slain before him.
'I swore to be avenged! while the army encamped before Rome, and I
stood with Hermanric, looking on the great walls in the misty evening;
while the daughter of the Roman was a prisoner in our tent, and I eyed
her as she lay on my knees; while for her sake my kinsman turned
traitor, and withheld my hand from the blow; while I passed unseen into
the lonely farm-house to deal judgment on him with my knife; while I
saw him die the death of a deserter at my feet, and knew that it was a
Roman who had lured him from his people, and blinded him to the
righteousness of revenge.
'I swore to be avenged! while I walked round the grave of the chieftain
who was the last of my race; while I stood alone out of the army of my
people in the city of the slayers of my babes; while I tracked the
footsteps of the Roman who had twice escaped me, as she fled through
the street; while I watched and was patient among the pillars of the
temple, and waited till the sun went down, and the victim was
unshielded for the moment to strike.
'I swore to be avenged! and my oath has been fulfilled--the knife that
still bleeds drops with her blood; the chief vengeance has been
wreaked! The rest that were to be slain remain for others, and not for
me! For now I go to my husband and my children; now the hour is near
at hand when I shall herd with their spirits in the Twilight World of
Shadows, and make my long-abiding place with them in the Valley of
Eternal Repose! The Destinies have willed it--it is enough!'
Her voice trembled and grew faint as she pronounced the last words.
The anguish of the fastenings at her wrists was at last overpowering
her senses--conquering, in spite of all resistance, her stubborn
endurance. For a little while yet she spoke at intervals, but her
speech was fragmentary and incoherent. At one moment she still gloried
in her revenge, at another she exulted in the fancied contemplation of
the girl's body still lying before her, and her hands writhed beneath
their bonds in the effort to repossess themselves of the knife and
strike again. But soon all sounds ceased to proceed from her lips,
save the loud, thick, irregular breathings, which showed that she was
yet conscious and yet lived.
Meanwhile the madman had passed into the inner recess of the temple,
and had drawn the shutter over the opening in the wall, through which
light had been admitted into the place when Numerian and Antonina first
entered it. Even the black chasm formed by the mouth of the vault of
the dragon now disappeared, with all other objects, in the thick
darkness. But no obscurity could confuse the senses of Ulpius in the
temple, whose every corner he visited in his restless wanderings by
night and by day alike. Led as if by a mysterious penetration of
sight, he traced his way unerringly to the entrance of the vault, knelt
down before it, and placing his hands on the first of the steps by
which it was descended, listened, breathless and attentive, to the
sounds that rose from the abyss--listened, rapt and unmoving, a
formidable and unearthly figure--like a magician waiting for a voice
from the oracles of Hell--like a spirit of Night looking down into the
mid-caverns of the earth, and watching the mysteries of subterranean
creation, the giant pulses of Action and Heat, which are the
life-springs of the rolling world.
The fitful wind whistled up, wild and plaintive; the river chafed and
bubbled through the iron grating below; the loose scales of the dragon
clashed as the night breezes reached them: and these sounds were still
to him as the language of his gods, which filled him with a fearful
rapture, and inspired him, in the terrible degradation of his being, as
with a new soul. He listened and listened yet. Fragments of wild
fancies--the vain yearnings of the disinherited mind to recover its
divine birthright of boundless thought--now thrilled through him, and
held him still and speechless where he knelt.
But at length, through the gloomy silence of the recess, he heard the
voice of Goisvintha raised once more, and in hoarse, wild tones calling
aloud for light and help. The agony of pain and suspense, the awful
sense of darkness and stillness, of solitary bondage and slow torment,
had at last effected that which no open peril, no common menace of
violent death could have produced. She yielded to fear and
despair--sank prostrate under a paralysing, superstitious dread. The
misery that she had inflicted on others recoiled in retribution on
herself, as she now shuddered under the consciousness of the first
emotions of helpless terror that she had ever felt.
Ulpius instantly rose from the vault, and advanced straight through the
darkness to the gates of the partition; but he passed his prisoner
without stopping for an instant, and hastening into the outer apartment
of the temple, began to grope over the floor for the knife which the
woman had dropped when he bound her. He was laughing to himself once
more, for the evil spirit was prompting him to a new project, tempting
him to a pitiless refinement of cruelty and deceit.
He found the knife, and returning with it to Goisvintha, cut the rope
that confined her wrists. Then she became silent when the first
sharpness of her suffering was assuaged; he whispered softly in her
ear, 'Follow me, and escape!'
Bewildered and daunted by the darkness and mystery around her, she
vainly strained her eyes to look through the obscurity as Ulpius drew
her on into the recess. He placed her at the mouth of the vault, and
here she strove to speak; but low, inarticulate sounds alone proceeded
from her powerless utterance. Still there was no light; still the
burning, gnawing agony at her wrists (relieved but for an instant when
the rope was cut) continued and increased; and still she felt the
presence of the unseen being at her side, whom no darkness could blind,
and who bound and loosed at his arbitrary will.
By nature fierce, resolute, and vindictive under injury, she was a
terrible evidence of the debasing power of crime, as she now stood,
enfeebled by the weight of her own avenging guilt, upraised to crush
her in the hour of her pride; by the agency of Darkness, whose perils
the innocent and the weak have been known to brave; by Suspense, whose
agony they have resisted; by Pain, whose infliction they have endured
in patience.
'Go down, far down the steep steps, and escape!' whispered the madman,
in soft, beguiling tones. 'The darkness above leads to the light below!
Go down, far down!'
He quitted his hold of her as he spoke. She hesitated, shuddered, and
drew back; but again she was urged forward, and again she heard the
whisper, 'The darkness above leads to the light below! Go down, far
down!'
Despair gave the firmness to proceed, and dread the hope to escape.
Her wounded arms trembled as she now stretched them out and felt for
the walls of the vault on either side of her. The horror of death in
utter darkness, from unseen hands, and the last longing aspiration to
behold the light of heaven once more, were at their strongest within
her as she began slowly and cautiously to tread the fatal stairs.
While she descended, the Pagan dropped into his former attitude at the
month of the vault, and listened breathlessly. Minutes seemed to
elapse between each step as she went lower and lower down. Suddenly he
heard her pause, as if panic-stricken in the darkness, and her voice
ascended to him, groaning, 'Light! light! oh, where is the light!' He
rose up, and stretched out his hands to hurl her back if she should
attempt to return; but she descended again. Twice he heard her heavy
footfall on the steps--then there was an interval of deep silence--then
a sharp, grinding clash of metal echoed piercingly through the vault,
followed by the noise of a dull, heavy fall, faintly audible far
beneath--and then the old familiar sounds of the place were heard
again, and were not interrupted more. The sacrifice to the Dragon was
achieved!
* * * * *
The madman stood on the steps of the sacred building, and looked out on
the street shining before him in the bright Italian moonlight. No
remembrance of Numerian and Antonina, and of the earlier events in the
temple, remained within him. He was pondering imperfectly, in vague
pride and triumph, over the sacrifice that he had offered up at the
shrine of the Dragon of brass. Thus secretly exulting, he now remained
inactive. Absorbed in his wandering meditations, he delayed to trace
the subterranean passages leading to the iron grating where the corpse
of Goisvintha lay washed by the waters, as they struggled onward
through the bars, and waiting but his hand to be cast into the river,
where all past sacrifices had been engulphed before it.
His tall solitary figure was lit by the moonlight streaming through the
pillars of the portico; his loose robes waved slowly about him in the
wind, as he stood firm and erect before the door of the temple: he
looked more like the spectral genius of departed Paganism than a living
man. But, lifeless though he seemed, his quick eye was still on the
watch, still directed by the restless suspicion of insanity. Minute
after minute quietly elapsed, and as yet nothing was presented to his
rapid observation but the desolate roadway, and the high, gloomy houses
that bounded it on either side. It was soon, however, destined to be
attracted by objects which startled the repose of the tranquil street
with the tumult of action and life.
He was still gazing earnestly on the narrow view before him, vaguely
imagining to himself, the while, Goisvintha's fatal descent into the
vault, and thinking triumphantly of her dead body that now lay on the
grating beneath it, when a red glare of torchlight, thrown wildly on
the moon-brightened pavement, whose purity it seemed to stain, caught
his eye.
The light appeared at the end of the street leading from the more
central portion of the city, and ere long displayed clearly a body of
forty or fifty people advancing towards the temple. The Pagan looked
eagerly on them as they came nearer and nearer. The assembly was
composed of priests, soldiers, and citizens--the priests bearing
torches, the soldiers carrying hammers, crowbars, and other similar
tools, or bending under the weight of large chests secured with iron
fastenings, close to which the populace walked, as if guarding them
with jealous care. This strange procession was preceded by two men,
who were considerably in advance of it--a priest and soldier. An
expression of impatience and exultation appeared on their pale,
famine-wasted countenances, as they approached the temple with rapid
steps.
Ulpius never moved from his position, but fixed his piercing eyes on
them as they advanced. Not vainly did he now stand, watchful and
menacing, before the entrance of his gloomy shrine. He had seen the
first degradations heaped on fallen Paganism, and he was now to see the
last. He had immolated all his affections and all his hopes, all his
faculties of body and mind, his happiness in boyhood, his enthusiasm in
youth, his courage in manhood, his reason in old age, at the altar of
his gods; and now they were to exact from him, in their defence, lonely
criminal, maddened, as he already was in their cause, more than all
this! The decree had gone forth from the Senate which devoted to
legalised pillage the treasures in the temples of Rome.
Rulers of a people impoverished by former exactions, and comptrollers
only of an exhausted treasury, the government of the city had searched
vainly among all ordinary resources for the means of paying the heavy
ransom exacted by Alaric as the price of peace. The one chance of
meeting the emergency that remained was to strip the Pagan temples of
the mass of jewelled ornaments and utensils, the costly robes, the
idols of gold and silver which they were known to contain, and which,
under that mysterious hereditary influence of superstition, whose power
it is the longest labour of truth to destroy, had remained untouched
and respected, alike by the people and the senate, after the worship
that they represented had been interdicted by the laws, and abandoned
by the nation.
This last expedient for freeing Rome from the blockade was adopted
almost as soon as imagined. The impatience of the starved populace for
the immediate collection of the ransom allowed the government little
time for the tedious preliminaries of deliberation. The soldiers were
provided at once with the necessary implements for the task imposed on
them; certain chosen members of the senate and the people followed
them, to see that they honestly gathered in the public spoil; and the
priests of the Christian churches volunteered to hallow the expedition
by their presence, and led the way with their torches into every secret
apartment of the temples where treasure might be contained. At the
close of the day, immediately after it had been authorised, this
strange search for the ransom was hurriedly commenced. Already much
had been collected; votive offerings of price had been snatched from
the altars, where they had so long hung undisturbed; hidden
treasure-chests of sacred utensils had been discovered and broken open;
idols had been stripped of their precious ornaments and torn from their
massive pedestals; and now the procession of gold-seekers, proceeding
along the banks of the Tiber, had come in sight of the little temple of
Serapis, and were hastening forward to empty it, in its turn, of every
valuable that it contained.
The priest and the soldier, calling to their companions behind to hurry
on, had now arrived opposite the temple steps, and saw confronting them
in the pale moonlight, from the eminence on which he stood, the weird
and solitary figure of Ulpius--the apparition of a Pagan in the
gorgeous robes of his priesthood, bidden back from the tombs to stay
the hand of the spoiler before the shrine of his gods.
The soldier dropped his weapon to the ground, and, trembling in every
limb, refused to proceed. But the priest, a tall, stern, emaciated man,
went on defenceless and undaunted. He signed himself solemnly with the
cross as he slowly ascended the steps; fixed his unflinching eyes on
the madman, who glared back on him in return; and called aloud in a
harsh, steady voice: 'Man or demon! in the name of Christ, whom thou
deniest, stand back!'
For an instant, as the priest approached him, the Pagan averted his
eyes and looked on the concourse of people and the armed soldiers
rapidly advancing. His fingers closed round the hilt of Goisvintha's
knife, which he had hitherto held loosely in his hand, as he exclaimed
in low, concentrated tones, 'Aha! the siege--the siege of Serapis!'
The priest, now standing on the same step with him, stretched out his
arm to thrust him back, and at that moment received the stroke of the
knife. He staggered, lifted his hand again to sign his forehead with
the cross, and, as he raised it, rolled back dead on the pavement of
the street.
The soldier, standing motionless with superstitious terror a few feet
from the corpse, called to his companions for help. Hurling his bloody
weapon at them in defiance, as they ran in confusion to the base of the
temple steps, Ulpius entered the building, and locked and chained the
gates.
Then the assembled people thronging round the corpse of the priest,
heard the madman shouting in his frenzy, as if to a great body of
adherents round him, to pour down the molten lead and the scorching
sand; to hurl back every scaling ladder planted against the walls; to
massacre each prisoner who was seized mounting the ramparts to the
assault; and as they looked up to the building from the street, they
saw at intervals, through the bars of the closed gates, the figure of
Ulpius passing swift and shadowy, his arms extended, his long grey hair
and white robes streaming behind him, as he rushed round and round the
temple reiterating his wild Pagan war-cries as he went. The enfeebled,
superstitious populace trembled while they gazed--a spectre driven on a
whirlwind would not have been more terrible to their eyes.
But the priest among the crowd, roused to fury by the murder of one of
their own body, revived the courage of those around them. Even the
shouts of Ulpius were now overpowered by the sound of their voices,
raised to the highest pitch, promising heavenly and earthly
rewards--salvation, money, absolution, promotion--to all who would
follow them up the steps and burst their way into the temple. Animated
by the words of the priests, and growing gradually confident in their
own numbers, the boldest in the throng seized a piece of timber lying
by the river side, and using it as a battering-ram, assailed the gate.
But they were weakened with famine; they could gain little impetus,
from the necessity of ascending the temple steps to the attack; the
iron quivered as they struck it, but hinge and lock remained firm
alike. They were preparing to renew the attempt, when a tremendous
shock--a crash as if the whole heavy roof of the building had fallen
in--drove them back in terror to the street.
Recalled by the sight of the armed men, the priests and the attendant
crowd of people who were advancing to invade his sanctuary, to the days
when he had defended the great Temple of Serapis at Alexandria, against
enemies similar in appearance, though far superior in numbers;
persuaded in the revival of these, the most sanguinary visions of his
insanity, that he was still resisting the Christian fanatics, supported
by his adherents in his sacred fortress of former years, the Pagan
displayed none of his accustomed cunning and care in moving through the
darkness around him. He hurried hither and thither, encouraging his
imaginary followers, and glorying in his dreams of slaughter and
success, forgetful in his frenzy of all that the temple contained.
As he pursued his wild course round and round the altar of idols, his
robe became entangled, and was torn by the projecting substances at one
corner of it. The whole overhanging mass tottered at the moment, but
did not yet fall. A few of the smaller idols, however, at the outside
dropped to the ground, and with them an image of Serapis, which they
happened partially to support--a heavy monstrous figure, carved
life-size in wood, and studded with gold, silver, and precious
stones--fell at the Pagan's feet. But this was all--the outer
materials of the perilous structure had been detached only at one
point; the pile itself still remained in its place.
The madman seized the image of Serapis in his arms, and passed blindly
onward with it through the passage in the partition into the recess
beyond. At that instant the shock of the first attack on the gates
resounded through the building. Shouting, as he heard it, 'A sally! a
sally! men of the Temple, the gods and the high priest lead you on!'
and still holding the idol before him, he rushed straight forward to
the entrance, and struck in violent collision against the backward part
of the pile.
The ill-balanced, top-heavy mass of images and furniture of many
temples swayed, parted, and fell over against the gates and the wall on
either side of them. Maimed and bleeding, struck down by the lower
part of the pile, as it was forced back against the partition when the
upper part fell, the fury of Ulpius was but increased by the crashing
ruin around him. He struggled up again into an erect position; mounted
on the top of the fallen mass--now spread out at the sides over the
floor of the building, but confined at one end by the partition, and at
the other by the opposite wall and the gates--and still clasping the
image of Serapis in his arms, called louder and louder to 'the men of
the Temple' to mount with him the highest ramparts and pour down on the
besiegers the molten lead!
The priests were again the first men to approach the gates of the
building after the shock that had been heard within it. The struggle
for the possession of the temple had assumed to them the character of a
holy warfare against heathenism and magic--a sacred conflict to be
sustained by the Church, for the sake of her servant who had fallen a
martyr at the outset of the strife. Strong in their fanatical
boldness, they advanced with one accord close to the gates. Some of
the smaller images of the fallen pile had been forced through the bars,
behind which appeared the great idols, the broken masses of furniture,
the long robes and costly hangings, all locked together in every wild
variety of position--a chaos of distorted objects heaped up by an
earthquake! Above and further inward, the lower part of the Pagan's
robe was faintly discernible through the upper interstices in the gate,
as he stood, commanding, on the summit of his prostrate altar, with his
idol in his arms.
The priests felt an instant conviction of certain triumph when they
discerned the cause of the shock that had been heard within the temple.
One of their number snatched up a small image that had fallen through
to the pavement where he stood, and holding it before the people below,
exclaimed exultingly--
'Children of the Church! the mystery is revealed! Idols more precious
than this lie by hundreds on the floor of the temple! It is no demon,
but a man, one man, who still defies us within!--a robber who would
defraud the Romans of the ransom of their lives!--the pillage of many
temples is around him. Remember now, that the nearer we came to this
place the fewer were the spoils of idolatry that we gathered in; the
treasure which is yours, the treasure which is to free you from the
famine, has been seized by the assassin of our holy brother; it is
there scattered at his feet! To the gates! To the gates again!
Absolution for all their sins to the men who burst in the gates!'
Again the mass of timber was taken up; again the gates were assailed;
and again they stood firm--they were now strengthened, barricaded by
the fallen pile. It seemed hopeless to attempt to break them down
without a reinforcement of men, without employing against them the
heaviest missiles, the strongest engines of war.
The people gave vent to a cry of fury as they heard from the temple the
hollow laughter of the madman triumphing in their defeat. The words of
the priest, in allaying their superstitious fears, had aroused the
deadly passions that superstition brings forth. A few among the throng
hurried to the nearest guard-house for assistance, but the greater part
pressed closely round the temple--some pouring forth impotent
execrations against the robber of the public spoil, some joining the
priests in calling on him to yield. But the clamour lasted not long;
it was suddenly and strangely stilled by the voice of one man in the
crowd, calling loudly to the rest to fire the temple!
The words were hardly spoken ere they were repeated triumphantly on all
sides. 'Fire the temple!' cried the people ferociously. 'Burn it over
the robber's head! A furnace--a furnace! to melt down the gold and
silver ready to our hands! Fire the temple! Fire the temple!'
Those who were most active among the crowd (which was now greatly
increased by stragglers from all parts of the city) entered the houses
behind them, and returned in a few minutes with every inflammable
substance that they could collect in their hands. A heap of fuel, two
or three feet in height, was raised against the gates immediately, and
soldiers and people pressed forward with torches to light it. But the
priest who had before spoken waved them back. 'Wait!' he cried; 'the
fate of his body is with the people, but the fate of his soul is with
the Church!'
Then, turning to the temple, he called solemnly and sternly to the
madman, 'Thy hour is come! repent, confess, and save thy soul!'
'Slay on! slay on!' answered the raving voice from within. 'Slay, till
not a Christian is left! Victory! Serapis! See, they drop from our
walls!--they writhe bleeding on the earth beneath us! There is no
worship but the worship of the gods! Slay! Slay on!'
'Light!' cried the priest. 'His damnation be on his own head!
Anathema! Maranatha! Let him die accursed!'
The dry fuel was fired at once at all points--it was an anticipation of
an 'Auto da Fe', a burning of a heretic, in the fifth century! As the
flames rose, the people fell back and watched their rapid progress.
The priests, standing before them in a line, stretched out their hands
in denunciation against the temple, and repeated together the awful
excommunication service of the Roman Church.
* * * * *
The fire at the gates had communicated with the idols inside. It was
no longer on his prostrate altar, but on his funeral pile that Ulpius
now stood; and the image that he clasped was the stake to which he was
bound. A red glare, dull at first, was now brightening and brightening
below him; flames, quick and noiseless, rose and fell, and rose again,
at different points, illuminating the interior of the temple with
fitful and changing light. The grim, swarthy forms of the idols seemed
to sway and writhe like living things in torment, as fire and smoke
alternately displayed and concealed them. A deadly stillness now
overspread the face and form of the Pagan, as he looked down
steadfastly on the deities of his worship engendering his destruction
beneath him. His cheek--the cheek which had rested in boyhood on his
mother's bosom--was pressed against the gilded breast of the god
Serapis, his taskmaster in life--his pillow in death!
'I rise! I rise to the world of light, with my deities whom I have
served!' he murmured; 'the brightness of their presence is like a
flaming fire; the smoke of their breath pours forth around me like the
smoke of incense! I minister in the Temples of the Clouds; and the
glory of eternal sunlight shines round me while I adore! I rise! I
rise!'
The smoke whirled in black volumes over his head; the fierce voice of
the fast-spreading fire roared on him; the flames leapt up at his
feet--his robes kindled, burst into radiant light, as the pile yawned
and opened under him.
* * * * *
Time had passed. The strife between the Temple and the Church was
ended. The priests and the people had formed a wider circle round the
devoted building; all that was inflammable in it had been burnt; smoke
and flame now burst only at intervals through the gates, and gradually
both ceased to appear. Then the crowd approached nearer to the temple,
and felt the heat of the furnace they had kindled, as they looked in.
The iron gates were red hot--from the great mass behind (still glowing
bright in some places, and heaving and quivering with its own heat) a
thin, transparent vapour rose slowly to the stone roof of the building,
now blackened with smoke. The priests looked eagerly for the corpse of
the Pagan; they saw two dark, charred objects closely united together,
lying in a chasm of ashes near the gate, at a spot where the fire had
already exhausted itself, but it was impossible to discern which was
the man and which was the idol.
The necessity of providing means for entering the temple had not been
forgotten while the flames were raging. Proper implements for forcing
open the gates were now at hand, and already the mob began to dip their
buckets in the Tiber, and pour water wherever any traces of the fire
remained. Soon all obstacles were removed; the soldiers crowded into
the building with spades in their hands, trampled on the black, watery
mire of cinders which covered what had once been the altar of idols,
and throwing out into the street the refuse ashes and the stone images
which had remained unconsumed, dug in what was left, as in a new mine,
for the gold and silver which the fire could not destroy.
The Pagan had lived with his idols, had perished with his idols!--and
now where they were cast away, there he was cast away with them. The
soldiers, as they dug into fragments the black ruins of his altar,
mingled him in fragments with it! The people, as they cast the refuse
thrown out to them into the river, cast what remained of him with what
remained of his gods! And when the temple was deserted, when the
citizens had borne off all the treasure they could collect, when
nothing but a few heaps of dust was left of all that had been burnt,
the night-wind blew away before it the ashes of Ulpius with the ashes
of the deities that Ulpius had served!