"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!"

CHAPTER IV.

THE VIGIL OF HOPE

A NEW prospect now opens before us. The rough paths through which we have hitherto threaded our way grow smoother as we approach their close; Rome, so long dark and gloomy to our view, brightens at length like a landscape when the rain is past, and the first rays of returning sunlight stream through the parting clouds. The smoke whirled in black volumes over his Some days have elapsed, and in those days the head; the fierce voice of the fast-spreading fire Temples have yielded all their wealth; the conroared on him; the flames leapt up at his feet-quered Romans have bribed the triumphant barhis robes kindled, burst into radiant light, as the pile yawned and opened under him.

*

barians to mercy; the ransom of the fallen city has been paid.

The Gothic army is still encamped round the Time had passed. The strife between the walls, but the gates are opened, markets for food Temple and the Church was ended. The priests are established in the suburbs, boats appear on the and the people had formed a wider circle round river and wagons on the high roads, laden with the devoted building; all that was inflammable provisions, and proceeding toward Rome. All in it had been burnt; the smoke and flame now the hidden treasure kept back by the citizens is 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 vapor 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.

now bartered for food; the merchants who hold the market reap a rich harvest of spoil, but the hungry are filled, the weak are revived, every one is content.

It is the end of the second day since the free sale of provisions and the liberty of egress from the city have been permitted by the Goths. The gates are closed for the night, and the people are quietly returning, laden with their supplies of food, to their homes. Their eyes no longer encounter the terrible traces of the march of pestilence and famine through every street; the corpses have been removed, and the sick are watched and sheltered. Rome is cleansed from her pollutions, and the virtues of household life begin to revive wherever they once existed. Death has thinned every family, but the survivors again assemble together in the social hall-even the veriest criminals, the lowest outcasts of the population, are united harmlessly for awhile in the general participation of the first benefits of peace.

To follow the citizens to their homes; to trace in their thoughts, words, and actions, the effect on them of their deliverance from the horrors of the blockade; to contemplate in the people of a whole city, now recovering as it were from a deep swoon, the varying forms of the first reviving symptoms in all classes, in good and bad, rich and poor-would afford matter enough in itself for a romance of searching human interest, for a drama of the passions, moving absorbingly through strange, intricate, and contrasted scenes. The Pagan had lived with his idols, had But another employment than this now claims perished with his idols!—and now where they our care. It is to an individual, and not to a were cast away there he was cast away with divided source of interest, that our attention turns: them. The soldiers, as they dug into fragments we relinquish all observations on the general the black ruins of his altar, mingled him in frag-mass of the populace, to revert to Numerian and ments with it! The people, as they cast the Antonina alone, to penetrate once more into 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!

little dwelling on the Pincian Hill.

The apartment where the father and daughter had suffered the pangs of famine together, during the latter days of the blockade, now presented an appearance far different from that which it had displayed on the occasion when they had last occupied it. The formerly bare walls were now covered with rich, thick hangings; and the simple couch and scanty table of other days had been exchanged for whatever was most luxurious and complete in the household furniture of the age, At one end of the room three women, attended

by a litle girl, were engaged in preparing some dishes of fruit and vegetables; at the other, two men were occupied in low, earnest conversation, occasionally looking round anxiously to a couch placed against the third side of the apartment, on which Antonina lay extended, while Numerian watched by her in silence. The point of Goisvintha's knife had struck deep, but, as yet, the fatal purpose of the assassination had failed.

outward and backward; the large vessels es caped; no vital part has been touched."

And yet you persist in declaring that you doubt her recovery!" exclaimed Vetranio, in low, mournful tones.

"I do," pursued the physician. "She must have been exhausted in mind and body, when she received the blow-I have watched her carefully; I know it! There is nothing of the natural health and strength of youth to oppose the effect of the wound. I have seen the old die from injuries that the young recover, because life, in them, was losing its powers of resistance she is in the position of the old !"

They have died before me, and she will die before me! I shall lose all-all !" sighed Vetranio bitterly to himself.

"The resources of our art are exhausted," continued the other, "nothing remains, but to watch carefully and wait patiently; the chances of life or death will be decided in a few hours; they are equally balanced now."

The girl's eyes were closed; her lips were parted in the languor of suffering; one of her hands lay listless and unmoving on her father's knee. A slight expression of pain, melancholy in its very slightness, appeared on her pale face, and occasionally a long-drawn, quivering breath escaped her nature's last touching utterance of its own feebleness! The old man, as he sat by her side, fixed on her a wistful, inquiring glance. Sometimes he raised his hand and gently and mechanically moved to and fro the long locks of her hair, as they spread over the head of the couch; but he never turned to communicate with the other persons in the room-he sat as if he "I shall lose all-all!" repeated the senator, saw nothing save his daughter's figure stretched mournfully, as if he heeded not the last words. before him, and heard nothing save the faint, "If she dies," said the physician, speaking in fluttering sound of her breathing, close at his ear. warmer tones, for he was struck with pity, in It was now dark, and one lamp, hanging from spite of himself, at the spectacle of Vetranio's the ceiling, threw a soft equal light over the room. utter dejection, "if she dies, you can at least reThe different persons occupying it presented but member that all that could be done to secure her little evidence of health and strength in their life has been done by you. Her father, helpless countenances, to contrast them in appearance with in his lethargy and his age, was fitted only to sit the wounded girl; all had undergone the wasting and watch her, as he has sat and watched her visitation of the famine, and all were pale and day after day; but you have spared nothing, forlanguid, like her. A strange, indescribable har- gotten nothing. Whatever I asked for her, that mony prevailed over the scene. Even the calm- you have provided; the hangings round the ness of absorbing expectation and trembling hope, room, and the couch that she lies on, are yours; expressed in the demeanor of Numerian, seemed the first fresh supplies of nourishment from the reflected in the actions of those around him, in newly-opened markets were brought here from the quietness with which the women pursued you; I told you that she was thinking incessanttheir employment, in the lower and lower whis-ly of what she had suffered, that it was necessary pers in which the men continued their conversa- to preserve her against her own recollections, tion. There was something in the air of the whole apartment that conveyed a sense of the solemn, unworldly stillness, which we attach to the abstract idea of religion.

Of the two men cautiously talking together, one was the patrician, Vetranio; the other, a celebrated physician of Rome.

But the countenance and manner of the senator gave melancholy proof that the orgy at his palace had altered him for the rest of his life. He looked what he was, a man changed forever in constitution and character. A fixed look of depression and gloom appeared in his eyes; his emaciated face was occasionally distorted by a nervous involuntary contraction of the muscles; it was evident that the paralyzing effect of the debauch which had destroyed his companions would remain with him to the end of his existence. No remnant of his careless self-possession, his easy, patrician affability, appeared in his manner, as he now listened to his companion's conversation; years seemed to have been added to his life, since he had headed the table at "The Banquet of Famine."

that the presence of women about her might do good, that a child appearing sometimes in the room might soothe her fancy, make her look at what was passing, instead of thinking of what was passed,-you found them, and sent them! I have seen parents less anxious for their children, lovers for their mistresses, than you for this girl."

"My destiny is with her," interrupted Vetranio, looking round superstitiously to the frail form on the couch. "I know nothing of the mysteries that the Christians call their Faith,' but I believe now in the soul; I believe that one soul contains the fate of another, and that her soul contains the fate of mine !"

The physician shook his head derisively. His calling had determined his philosophy-he was as ardent a Materialist as Epicurus himself.

"Listen," said Vetranio," since I first saw her, a change came over my whole being; it was as if her life was mingled with mine! I had no influence over her, save an influence for ill; I loved her, and she was driven defenseless from her home! I sent my slaves to search Rome "Yes" said the physician, a cold, calm man, night and day. I exerted all my power, I lavishwho spoke much, but pronounced all his words ed my wealth to discover her; and, for the first with emphatic deliberation, "Yes, as I have al-time, in this one effort, I failed in what I had ready told you, the wound, in itself, was not mor- undertaken. I felt that through me she was lost tal. If the blade of the knife had entered the dead! Days passed on; life weighed wear neck inward, in a forward direction, she must on me; the famine came. You know in what have died when she was struck. But it passed way I determined that my career should close

again.

the rumor of the Banquet of Famine reached you | Those are around her who can watch her best as it reached others! I stood alone in my doom- Nothing remains for us but to wait and hope ed palace; the friends whom I had tempted to With the earliest morning we will return." their destruction lay lifeless around me; the torch He delivered a few farewell directions to one was in my hand that was to light our funeral of the women in attendance, and then, accompa pile, to set us free from the loathsome world! I nied by the senator, who, without speaking again, approached triumphantly to kindle the annihilat- mechanically rose to follow him, quitted the ng flames, when she stood before me-she, whom room. I had sought as lost, and mourned as dead! A After this, the silence was only interrupted by strong hand seemed to wrench the torch from the sound of an occasional whisper, and of quick, me; it dropped to the ground! She departed light footsteps passing backward and forward. again; but I was powerless to take it up; her Then the cooling, reviving draughts which had look was still before me; her face, her figure, been prepared for the night were poured ready she, herself, appeared ever watching between the into the glasses; and the women approached Nutorch and me! The officers of the senate, when merian, as if to address him, but he waved his they entered the palace, found me still standing hand impatiently when he saw them; and then on the place where we had met! Days passed they too, in their turn, departed, to wait in an adon again: I stood, looking out upon the street, joining apartment until they should be summoned and thought of my companions, whom I had lured to their death, and of my oath to partake Nothing changed in the manner of the father their fate, which I had never fulfilled. I would when he was left alone in the chamber of sickhave driven my dagger to my heart; but her ness, which the lapse of a few hours might conface was yet before me, my hands were bound! vert into the chamber of death. He sat watching In that hour I saw her for the second time; saw Antonina, and touching the outspread locks of her carried past me- wounded, assassinated! her hair from time to time, as had been his wont. She had saved me once; she had saved me twice! It was a fair, starry night; the fresh air of the I knew that now the chance was offered me, af- soft winter climate of the South blew gently over ter having wrought her ill, to work her good; the earth, the great city was sinking fast into after failing to discover her when she was lost, to tranquillity, calling voices were sometimes heard succeed in saving her when she was dying; after faintly from the principal streets, and the distant having survived the deaths of my friends at my notes of martial music sounded cheerily from the own table, to survive to see life restored under Gothic camp as the sentinels were posted along my influence, as well as destroyed! These were the line of watch; but soon these noises ceased, my thoughts; these are my thoughts_still- and the stillness of Rome was as the stillness thoughts felt only since I saw her! Do you round the couch of the wounded girl. know now why I believe that her soul contains the fate of mine? Do you see me, weakened, shattered, old before my time; my friends lost, my fresh feelings of youth gone forever; and can you not now comprehend that her life is my life? that if she dies, the one good purpose of my existence is blighted !-that I lose all I have henceforth to live for!--all, all !"

As he pronounced the concluding words, the girl's eyes half unclosed, and turned languidly toward her father. She made an effort to lift her hand caressingly from his knee to his neck; but her strength was unequal even to this slight action. The hand was raised only a few inches ere it sank back again to its old position; a tear rolled slowly over her cheek as she closed her eyes again, but she never spoke.

"See," said the physician, pointing to her, "the current of life is at its lowest ebb! If it flows again, it must flow to-night."

Vetranio made no answer: he dropped down on a seat near her, and covered his face with his robe.

The physician, beholding the senator's situation, and reflecting on the strange, hurriedly-uttered confession which had just been addressed to him, began to doubt whether the scenes through which his patron had lately passed had not affected his brain. Philosopher though he was, the man of science had never observed the outward symptoms of the first working of good and pure influences in elevating a degraded mind; he had rever watched the denoting signs of speech and action which mark the progress of mental revolution, while the old nature is changing for the pew; such objects of contemplation existed not for him. He gently touched Vetranio on the shoulder. "Rise," said he, "and let us depart,

Day after day, and night after night, since the assassination in the Temple, Numerian had kept the same place by his daughter's side. Each hour as it passed found him still absorbed in his long vigil of hope; his life seemed suspended in its onward course by the one object that now enthralled it. At the brief intervals when his bodily weariness overpowered him on his melancholy watch, it was observed by those around him that, even in his short dreaming slumbers, his face remained ever turned in the same direction, toward the head of the couch, as if attracted there by some irresistible influence, by some powerful ascendancy, felt even amid the deepest repose of sensation, the heaviest fatigue of the overlabored mind, and the worn, sinking heart. He held no communication save by signs with the friends about him; he seemed neither to hope, to doubt, nor to despair with them; all his faculties were strung up to vibrate at one point only, and were dull and unimpressible in every other direction.

But twice had he been heard to speak more than the fewest, simplest words. The first time, when Antonina uttered the name of Goisvintha, on the recovery of her senses after her wound, he answered eagerly by reiterated declarations that there was nothing henceforth to fear; for he had seen the assassin dead under the Pagan's foot, on leaving the Temple. The second time, when mention was incautiously made before him of ru mors circulated through Rome of the burning of an unknown Pagan priest, hidden in the temple of Serapis, with vast treasures around him, the old man was seen to start and shudder, and heard to pray for the soul that was now waiting before the dread Judgment Seat; to murmur about a vain restoration, and a discovery made too late

"Father!" said the girl tenderly, "we have that within us which not death itself can separate. In another world I shall still think of you, The sun rose bright in a cloudless sky. when you think of me! I shall see you even the fresh, sharp air of the early dawn warmed when I am no more here, when you long to see under its spreading rays, the women entered the me! When you go out alone and sit under the apartment again; and partly drew aside the curtrees on the garden bank where I used to sit; tain and shutter from the window. The beams when you look forth on the far plains and moun- of the new light fell fair and glorifying on the tains that I used to look on; when you read at girl's face; the faint, calm breeze ruffled the night in the Bible that we have read in together, lighter locks of her hair. Once this would have and remember Antonina as you lie down sorrow-awakened her; but it did not disturb her new. ful to rest; then I shall see you! then you will Soon after, the voice of the child who sojourned feel that I am looking on you! You will be with the women in the house was heard beneath, calm and consoled, even by the side of my grave; in the hall, through the half-opened door of the for you will think, not of the body that is beneath, room. The little creature was slowly ascending but of the spirit that is waiting for you, as I have the stairs, singing her faltering morning song to often waited for you here when you were away, herself. She was preceded on her approach by and I knew that the approach of the evening a tame dove, bought at the provision market outwould bring you home again!" side the walls, but preserved for the child as a

pet and plaything by its mother. The bird Government at Ravenna, were conducted with Buttered, cooing, into the room, perched upon the cunning moderation by the conqueror, and with head of the couch and began dressing its feathers infatuated audacity by the conquered, and ultithere. The women had caught the infection of the old man's enthralling suspense; and moved not to bid the child retire, or to take away the dove from its place-they watched like him. But the sof, lulling notes of the bird were powerless over the girl's ear, as the light sunbeam over her face-still she never woke.

The child entered, and pausing in her song, dimbed on to the side of the couch. She held out one little hand for the dove to perch upon, placed the other lightly on Antonina's shoulder, and pressed her fresh, rosy lips to the girl's faded cheek. "I and my bird have come to make Antonina well this morning," she said gravely. The still, heavily-closed eyelids moved!-they quivered, opened, closed, then opened again. The eyes had a faint, dreaming, unconscious look; but Antonina lived! Antonina was awakened at last to another day on earth!

Her father's rigid, straining gaze still remained fixed upon her as at first, but on his countenance there was a blank, an absence of all appearance of sensation and life. The women, as they looked on Antonina and looked on him, began to weep; the child resumed very softly its morning song, now addressing it to the wounded girl, and now to the dove.

mately terminated in a resumption of hostilities. Rome was besieged a second and a third time by "the barbarians." On the latter occasion the city was sacked; its palaces were burnt; its treasures were seized; the monuments of the Christian religion were alone respected.

But it is no longer with the Goths that our narrative is concerned; the connection with them which it has hitherto maintained closes with the end of the first siege of Rome. We can claim the reader's attention for historical events no more,— the march of our little pageant, arrayed for his pleasure, is over. If, however, he has felt, and still retains some interest in Antonina, he will not refuse to follow us, and look on her again ere we part.

More than a month had passed since the besieging army had retired to their winter quarters, when several of the citizens of Rome assembled themselves on the plains beyond the walls, to enjoy one of those rustic festivals of ancient times, which are still celebrated, under different usages, but with the same spirit, by the Italians of modern days.

The place was a level plot of ground beyond the Pincian Gate, backed by a thick grove of pine trees, and looking toward the north over the At this moment Vetranio and the physician smooth extent of the country round Rome. The appeared on the scene. The latter advanced to persons congregated were mostly of the lower the couch, removed the child from it, and ex-class. Their amusements were dancing, music, amined Antonina intently. At length, partly games of strength and games of chance; and addressing Numerian, partly speaking to himself, he said: "She has slept fong, deeply, without moving, almost without breathing-a sleep like death to all who looked upon it ?"

The old man spoke not in reply; but the women answered eagerly in the affirmative.

"She is saved," pursued the physician, leisurely quitting the side of the couch, and smiling on Vetranio; "be careful of her for days and days to come."

above all, to people who had lately suffered the extremities of famine, abundant eating and drinking,-long, serious, ecstatic employment of the powers of mastication and the faculties of taste.

Among the assembly were some individuals whose dress and manner raised them, outwardly at least, above the general mass. These persons walked backward and forward together on different parts of the ground, as observers, not as partakers in the sports. One of their number, how"Saved! saved!" echoed the child joyfully, ever, in whatever direction he turned, preserved setting the dove free in the room, and running to an isolated position. He held an open letter in Numerian to climb on his knees. The father his hand, which he looked at from time to time, glanced down when the clear young voice and appeared to be wholly absorbed in his own sounded in his ear. The springs of joy, so long thoughts. This man we may advantageously dried up in his heart, welled forth again as he particularize on his own account, as well as on saw the little hands raised toward him entreat-account of the peculiarity of his accidental situaingly; his gray head drooped-he wept.

At a sign from the physician the child was led from the room. The silence of deep and solemn emotion was preserved by all who remained; nothing was heard but the suppressed sobs of the old man, and the faint retiring notes of the infant voice still singing its morning song. And now, one word, joyfully reiterated again and again,

made all the burden of the music:"SAVED! SAVED !"

tion; for he was the favored minister of Vetranio's former pleasures-"the industrious Carrio."

The freedman (who was last introduced to the reader, as exhibiting to Vetranio the store of offal which he had collected during the famine, for the consumption of the palace) had contrived of late greatly to increase his master's confidence in him. On the organization of the Banquet of Famine, he had discreetly refrained from testifying the smallest desire to save himself from the catastrophe in which the senator and his friends had determined to involve themselves. Securing himself in a place of safety, he awaited the end of the orgy; and when he found that its unexpected termina. tion left his master still living to employ him, appeared again as a faithful servant, ready to resume his customary occupations with undiminished zeal.

After the dispersion of his household during the famine, and amid the general confusion of the social system in Rome, on the raising of the block. ade, Vetranio found no one near him that he could