hin and grasped his robe with a strength which seemed utterly incompatible with the slenderof her form and the feebleness of her sex and age. The first voice that broke the silence which ensed was Numerian's. He advanced, his face ghastly with anguish, his lip quivering with suppressed emotions, to the senator's side, and addressed him thus: Put up your weapon; I come but to ask a favor at your hands." Vetranio mechanically obeyed him. There was something in his stern calmness, frightful at such a moment, of the Christian's manner that awed him in spite of himself. The favor I would petition for," continued Numerian, in low, steady, bitter tones, "is that you would remove your harlot there, to your abode. Here are no singing boys, no banqueting halls, no perfumed couches. The retreat a solitary old man is no place for such a one as the. I beseech you remove her to a more ongenial home. She is well fitted for her trade, er mother was a harlot before her!" He laughed scornfully, and pointed as he spoke to the figure of the unhappy girl kneeling with stretched arms at his feet. *Father, father!" she cried, in accents bereft of their native softness and melody, “have you forgotten me ??? not "I know you not!" he replied, thusting her from him-"Return to his bosom, you shall never more be pressed to mine! Go to his palace, my bouse is yours no longer! You are his harlot, my daughter! I command you-go !" As he advanced toward her with fierce glance and threatening demeanor, she suddenly rose up. Her reason seemed crushed within her, as she koked with frantic earnestness from Vetranio to er father, and then back again from her father Vetranio. On one side she saw an enemy who had ruined her she knew not how, and threatened her with she knew not what; on the other a parent who had cast her off. For one instant she directed a final look on the room, that, sad and nely though it was, had still been a home to her; and then without a word or a sigh she urned, and crouching like a beaten dog, fled from the house. the flight of Antonina, the look of frantic misery fixed on him by the unfortunate girl at the moment of her departure, almost sobered him for the instant, as he stood before the now solitary father gazing vacantly around him with emotions of uncontrollable confusion and dismay. Meanwhile a third person was now approaching to join the two occupants of the bedchamber abandoned by its ill fated mistress. Although in the subterranean retreat to which he had retired on leaving Vetranio, Ulpius had not noticed the silent entrance of the master of the house, he had heard through the open doors the sound, low though it was, of the Christian's voice. As he rose, suspecting all things and prepared for every emergency, to ascend to the bedchamber, he saw, while he mounted the lowest range of stairs, a figure in white pass rapidly through the hall and disappear by the principal entrance of the house. He hesitated for an instant and looked after it, but the fugitive figure had passed so swiftly in the uncertain light of early morning that he was unable to identify it, and he determined to ascertain the progress of events, now that Numerian must have discovered a portion at least of the plot against his daughter and himself, by ascending immediately to Antonina's apartment, whatever might be the consequences of his intrusion at such an hour on her father's wrath. As soon as the Pagan appeared before him, a sensible change took place in Vetranio. The presence of Ulpius in the chamber was a positive relief to the senator's perturbed faculties, after the mysterious, overpowering influence that the moral command expressed in the mere presence of the father and the master of the house, at such an hour, had exercised over them. Over Ulpius he had an absolute right-Ulpius was his dependant; and he determined, therefore, to extort from the servant whom he despised, an explanation of the mysteries in the conduct of the master whom he feared, and the daughter whom he began to doubt. "Where is Antonina?" he cried, starting as if from a trance, and advancing fiercely toward the treacherous Pagan. "She has left the room-she must have taken refuge with you.” With a slow and penetrating gaze Ulpius looked round the apartment. A faint agitation was perceptible in his livid countenance, but he uttered not a word. During the whole of the scene, Vetranio had stod so fixed in the helpless astonishment of intoxication, as to be incapable of moving or tering a word. All that took place during the The senator's face became pale and red with short and terrible interview between father and alternate emotions of apprehension and rage child, utterly perplexed him. He heard no loud, He seized the Pagan by the throat, his eye sparkviolent anger on one side, no clamorous petition- led, his blood boiled, he began to suspect even ing for forgiveness on the other. The stern old then that Antonina was lost to him forever. man whom Antonina had called father, and who "I ask you again where is she?" he shouted in had been pointed out to him as the most austere a voice of fury. "If through this night's work Christian in Rome, far from avenging his intru- she is lost or harmed, I will revenge it on you. sion on Antonina's slumber, had voluntarily aban- Is this the performance of your promise? Do doned his daughter to his licentious will. That you think that I will direct your desired restorathe anger or irony of so severe a man should in- tion of the gods of old for this? If evil comes spire such an action as this, or that Numerian, to Antonina through your treachery, sooner than ike his servant, was plotting to obtain some assist you in your secret projects, I would see strange mysterious favor from him by using An- you and your accursed deities all burning toJanina as a bribe, seemed perfectly impossible. gether in the Christians' hell! Where is the All that passed before the senator was, to his girl, you slave Villain, where was your vigi bewildered imagination, thoroughly incompre- lance when you let that man surprise us at our beasible. Frivolous, thoughtless, profligate as first interview? he might be, his nature was not radically base, He turned toward Numerian as he spoke. and when the scene of which he had been the Trouble and emergency gift the faculties with a astounded witness was abruptly terminated by more than mortal penetration. Every worl that he had uttered had eaten its burning way into the My part, like my Redeemer's, was to teach father's heart. Hours of narrative could not have repentance and to show mercy! Accursed be convinced him how fatally he had been deceived, the pride and anger that drove justice and patience more thoroughly than the few hasty expressions he had just heard. No word passed his lips-no action betrayed his misery. He stood before the spoilers of his home, changed in an instant from the courageous enthusiast to the feeble, helpless, heart-broken man. from my heart, when I beheld her, as I thought, submitting herself without a struggle or a cry, to my dishonor, and hers! Could I not have imagined her terror, could I not have reinembered her purity? Alas, my beloved, if I myself have been the dupe of the wicked, what marvel is it Though all the ferocity of his old Roman blood that you should have been betrayed as well! had been roused in Vetranio, as he threatened And I have driven you from me, you, from whose Ulpius, the father's look of cold, silent, frightful mouth no word of anger ever dropped! I have despair froze it in his young veins in an instant. thrust you from my bosom, you who were the His heart was still the impressible heart of adornment of my age! My death approaches, youth; and, struck for the first time in his life and you will not be by to pardon my heavy of with emotions of horror and remorse, he advanc-fense, to close my weary eyes, to mourn by my ed a step to offer such explanation and atone- solitary tomb! God-oh God! If I am left ment as he best might, when the voice of Ulpius thus lonely on the earth, thou hast punished me suspended his intentions, and made him pause to beyond what I can bear!" listen. "She passed me in the hall," muttered the Pagan doggedly, “I did my part in betraying her into your power-it was for you to hinder her in her flight. Why did you not strike him to the earth," he continued, pointing with a mocking smile to Numerian, "when he surprised you? You are wealthy and a noble of Rome; murder would have been no crime in you!" 66 Stand back!" cried the senator, thrusting him from the position he had hitherto occupied in the doorway. "She may be recovered even yet! All Rome shall be searched for her!" The next instant he disappeared from the room, and the master and servant were left together alone. He paused-his emotions for the instant bereft him of speech. After an interval, he muttered to himself in a low, moaning voice-"I called her harlot! My pure, innocent child! I called her harlot-I called her harlot !" In a paroxysm of despair, he started up and looked distractedly around him. Ulpius still stood motionless at the window. At the sight of the ruthless Pagan he trembled in every limb. All those infirmities of age that had been hitherto spared him, seemed to overwhelm him in an instant. He feebly advanced to his betrayer's side, and addressed him thus: "I have lodged you, taught you, cared for you; I have never intruded on your secrets, never doubted your word, and for all this, you have The silence that now reigned in the apartment repaid me by plotting against my daughter and was broken by distant sounds of uproar and con- deceiving me! If your end was to harm me by fusion in the streets of the city beneath. These assailing my child's happiness and honor you ominous noises had arisen with the dawn of day, have succeeded! If you would banish me from but the different emotions of the occupants of Rome, if you would plunge me into obscurity, Numerian's abode had so engrossed them, that to serve some mysterious ambition of your the turmoil in the outer world had passed un-own, you may dispose of me as you will! heeded by all. No sooner, however, had Vetra- I bow before the terrible power of your treach nio departed than it caught the attention of Ulpius, ery! I will renounce whatever you command, and he advanced to the window. What he there if you will restore to me my child! I am helpsaw and heard was of no ordinary importance, less and miserable; I have neither heart nor for it at once fixed him to the spot where he strength to seek her myself! You, who know stood, in mute and ungovernable surprise. all things and can dare all dangers, may restore her to pardon and bless me, if you will! Remember, whoever you really are, that you were once helpless and alone, and that you are still old, like me! Remember that I have promised to abandon to you whatever you desire! Remember that no woman's voice can cheer me, no woman's heart feel for me, now that I am old and lonely, but my daughter's! I have guessed from the words of the nobleman whom you serve, what are the designs you cherish and the faith you profess; I will neither betray the one, nor assault the other! I thought that my labors for the Church were more to me than anything on earth; but now, that through my At length, apparently unaware at first that he fault, my daughter is driven from her father's was not alone in the room, Numerian spoke. In roof, I know that she is dearer to me than the his low, broken. tremulous accents, none of his greatest of my designs; I must gain her parden; adherents would have recognized the voice of the I must win back her affection before I die! You eloquent preacher-the bold chastiser of the vices are powerful and can recover her! Ulpius of the Church. The whole nature of the man-Ulpius!" moral, intellectual, physical,-seemed fatally and completely changed. While Ulpius was occupied at the window, Numerian had staggered to the side of the bed which his ill-timed severity had made vacant, perhaps forever. The power of action, the capacity to go forth and seek his child himself, was entirely suspended in the agony of her loss, as the miserable man fell on his knees, and in the anguish of his heart endeavored to find solace in prayer. In the positions they severally occupied the servant and the master long remained-the betrayer watching at the window, the betrayed mourning at his lost daughter's bed-both alike silent, both alike unconscious of the lapse of time. She was innocent, she was innocent!" he whispered to himself. "Ait even had she been guilty was it o me to d ive her from my doors! As he spoke the Christian knelt at the Pagar's feet. It was terrible to see the man of affection and integrity thus humbled before the man of heartlessness and crime ! Ulpius turned to behold him, then without word raised him from the ground, and thrust- daughter's form, deaf to all sounds but her voice; and he murmured as he looked vacantly forth upon the wild view before him, "Where is my child-where is my child?" had arisen high in the heaven and beamed in dazzling brilliancy over Rome and the "What is your child to me? What are the barbs. A vague, fearful, mysterious desolation fortunes or affections of man or woman, at such ened to have suddenly overwhelmed the whole an hour as this?" cried the Pagan, as he stood ge of dwellings beyond the walls. No sounds by Numerian, with features horribly animated by ree from the gardens, no population idled in the the emotions of fierce delight and triumph that streets. The ramparts on the other hand were were raging within him at the prospect he becrowded at every visible point with people of all held. "Dotard, look from this window! Listen ranks, and the distant squares and amphitheaters to those voices! The gods whom I serve, the of the city itself, swarmed like ant-hills to the gods whom you and your worship would fain eye with the crowds that struggled within them. have destroyed, have risen to avenge themselves Confused cries and strange, wild noises rose at all at last! Behold those suburbs-they are left points from these masses of human beings. The desolate! Hear those cries-they are from whole of Rome seemed the prey of a vast and Roman lips! While your household's puny universal revolt. troubles have run their course, this city of aposExtraordinary and affrighting as was the scene tates has been doomed! In the world's annals at the moment when he beheld it, it passed this morning will never be forgotten! THE heeded before the eyes of the scarce conscious GOTHS ARE AT THE GATES OF ROME!" ther. He was blind to all sights but his CHAPTER I. THE GOTHS. Suckville's "Gorboduc." ed fast in his mind; a daring ambition expanded within him-the ambition, not of the barbarian plunderer, but of the avenger who had come to Ir was no false rumor that had driven the punish; not of the warrior who combated for populace of the suburbs to fly to the security of combat's sake, but of the nero who was vowed the city walls. It was no ill-founded cry of to conquer and to sway. From the far-distant terror that struck the ear of Ulpius, as he stood days when Odin was driven from his territories at Numerian's window. The name of Rome by the Romans, to the night polluted by the had really lost its pristine terrors; the walls of massacre of the hostages in Aquileia, the hour of Rome, those walls which had morally guarded just and terrible retribution for Gothic wrongs the Empire by their renown, as they had actually had been delayed through the weary lapse of garded its capital by their strength, were de- years, and the warning convulsion of bitter prived at length of their ancient inviolability. strifes, to approach at last under him. He looked An army of barbarians had indeed penetrated for on the towering walls before him, the only invaconquest and for vengeance to the City of the der since Hannibal by whom they had been beWorld! The achievement which the invasions held; and he felt as he looked, that his new aspiraof six hundred years had hitherto attempted in tions did not deceive him, that his dreams of vain, was now accomplished, and accomplished dominion were brightening into proud reality, by the men whose forefathers had once fled like that his destiny was gloriously linked with the bunted beasts to their native fastnesses, before overthrow of Imperial Rome! the legions of the Cæsars-The Goths were at the gates of Rome !" But even in the moment of approaching triumph, the leader of the Goths was still wily in And now, as his warriors encamped around purpose and moderate in action. His impatient him, as he saw the arrayed hosts whom his sum-warriors waited but the word to commence the mons had gathered together, and his energy led assault, to pillage the city, and to slaughter the on, threatening at their doors the corrupt senate inhabitants; but he withheld it. Scarcely had who had deceived, and the boastful populace who the army halted before the gates of Rome, when bad despised him, what emotions stirred within the heart of Alaric? As the words of martial command fell from his lips, and his eyes watched the movements of the multitudes around him, The numbers of his forces, increased during his what exalted aspirations, what daring resolves, march by the accession of thirty thousand auxili grew and strengthened in the mind of the man aries, were now divided into battalions, varying Who was the pioneer of that mighty revolution, in strength according to the service that was rewhich swept from one quarter of the world the quired of them. These divisions stretched round way, the civilization, the very life and spirit of the city walls, and though occupying separate centuries of ancient rule? High thoughts gather- | posts, and devoted to separate duties, were se the news was promulgated among their ranks, that Alaric, for purposes of his own, had determined to reduce the city by a blockade. arranged as to be capable of uniting at a signal in any numbers, on any given point. Before each of the twelve principal gates a separate encampment was raised. Multitudes watched the navigation of the Tiber in every possible direction, with untiring vigilance; and not one of the ordinary inlets to Rome, however apparently unimportant, was overlooked.* By these means, every mode of communication between the beleaguered city and the wide and fertile tracts of land around it, was effectually prevented. When it is remembered that this elaborate plan of blockade was enforced against a place containing, at the lowest possible computation, twelve hundred thousand inhabitants, destitute of magazines for food within its walls, dependent for supplies on its regular contributions from the country without, governed by an irresolute senate, and defended by an enervated army, the horrors that now impended over the besieged Romans are as easily imagined as described.† Among the ranks of the army that now surrounded the doomed city, the division appointed to guard the Pincian Gate will be found, at this juncture, most worthy of the reader's attention; for one of the warriors appointed to its subordinate command was the young chieftain Hermanric, who had been accompanied by Goisvintha through all the toils and dangers of the march, since the time when we left him at the Italian Alps. hinder their continued progress. Aarnic's in domitable will conquered every obstacle of nature and every deficiency of man. Darkness had nc obscurity that forced him to repose, and lassitude no eloquence that lured him to delay. In no part of the army had the commands of the Gothic king been so quickly and intelligently executed, as in that appointed to watch the Pincian gate. The interview of Hermanric and Goisvintha in the young chieftain's tent, was, consequently, uninterrupted for a considerable space of time by any fresh mandate from the head quarters of the camp. In outward appearance, both the brother and sister had undergone a change remarkable enough to be visible, even by the uncertain light of the torch which now shone on them as they stood together at the door of the tent. The features of Goisvintha-which at the period when we first beheld her on the shores of the mountain lake, retained in spite of her poignant sufferings, much of the lofty and imposing beauty that had been their natural characteristic in her happier days— now preserved not the slightest traces of their former attractions. Its freshness had withered from her complexion, its fullness had departed from her form. Her eyes had contracted an unvarying sinister expression of malignant despair, and her manner had become sullen, repul sive, and distrustful. This alteration in her outward aspect, was but the result of a more perilous change in the disposition of her heart. The death of her last child at the very moment when her flight had successfully directed her to the protection of her people, had affected her more fatally than all the losses she had previously sustained. The difficulties and dangers that she had encountered in saving her offspring from the massacre; the dismal certainty that the child was the only one, out of all the former objects of her affection, left to her to love; the wild sense of triumph that she experienced in remembering, that in this single instance her solitary efforts had thwarted the savage treachery of the Court of Rome, had inspired her with feelings of devotion toward the last of her household which almost bordered on insanity. And, now that her beloved charge, her innocent victim, her future warrior, had, after all her struggles for his preservation, pined and died; now that she was childless indeed; now that Roman cruelty had won its end in spite of all her patience, all her courage, all her endurance; every noble feeling within her sunk, annihilated at the shock. Her sorrow took the fatal form which irretrievably destroys, in women, all the softer and better emotions;-it changed to the despair that asks no sympathy, to the grief that holds no communion with tears. The watch had been set, the tents had been pitched, the defenses had been raised on the portion of ground selected to occupy every possible approach to the Pincian Gate, as Hermanric retired to await by Goisvintha's side, whatever further commands he might yet be entrusted with by his superiors in the Gothic camp. The spot occupied by the young warrior's simple tent was on a slight eminence, apart from the positions chosen by his comrades, eastward of the city gate, and overlooking at some distance the deserted gardens of the suburbs, and the stately palaces of the Pincian Hill. Behind his temporary dwelling was the open country, reduced to a fertile solitude by the flight of its terrified inhabitants; and at each side lay one unvarying prospect of military strength and preparation, stretching out its anímated confusion of soldiers, tents, and engines of warfare, as far as the sight could reach. It was now evening. The walls of Rome, enshrouded in a rising mist, showed dim and majestic to the eyes of the Goths. The noises in the beleaguered city softened and deepened, seeming to be muffled in the growing darkness of the autumn night, and becoming less and less audible as the vigilant besiegers listened to them from their respective posts. One by one, lights broke wildly forth at irregular distances, in the Gothic camp. Harshly and fitfully the shrill call of the signal trumpets rung from rank to rank; and through the dim thick air rose, in the intervals of the more important noises, the clash of heavy hammers, and the shout of martial command. Wherever the preparations for the blockade were still incomplete, neither the approach of night nor the pretext of weariness were suffered for an instant to Alarichus blocked up the gates all round, and having possessed himself of the river Tiber, obstructed the supply of necessaries from the port to the city. -Translation of Zosimus, Book V. For the population of Rome, see "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," chap. 31, p. 485. Less elevated in intellect and less susceptible in disposition, the change to sullenness of expres sion and abruptness of manner now visible ir Hermanric, resulted rather from his constant contemplation of Goisvintha's gloomy despair, thar from any actual revolution in his own character In truth, however many might be the points of outward resemblance now discernible between the brother and sister, the difference in degree o their moral positions, implied of itself the difference in degree of the inward sorrow of each Whatever the trials and afflictions that migh assail him, Hermanric possessed the healthful elasticity of youth and the martial occupations of manhood to support them. Goisvintha could repose on neither. With no employment but not of instinctive sentiment and momentary imbitter remembrance to engage her thoughts, with pulse. In the wild, poetical code of the old kindly aspiration, no soothing hope to fill her Gothic superstition was one axiom, closely and heart, she was abandoned irrevocably to the infence of unpartaken sorrow and vindictive despair. Both the woman and the warrior stood together in silence for some time. At length, without taking his eyes from the dusky, irregular mass before him, which was all that night now left visible of the ill-fated city, Hermanric addressed Goisvinthia thus: "Have you no words of triumph, as you look on the ramparts that your people have fought for generations to behold at their mercy, thus? Can woman of the Goths be silent when she stands before the city of Rome ?" strangely approximating to an important theory in the Christian scheme-the watchfulness of an omnipotent Creator over a finite creature. Every action of the body, every impulse of the mind was the immediate result, in the system of wor ship among the Goths, of the direct, though invisible interference of the divinities they adored. When, therefore, they observed that women were more submitted in body to the mysterious laws of nature and temperament, and more swayed in mind by the native and universal instincts of humanity than themselves, they inferred, as an inevitable conclusion, that the female sex was more incessantly regarded, and I came hither to behold Rome pillaged, and more constantly and remarkably influenced by Romans slaughtered; what is Rome blockaded to the gods of their worship, than the male. Actme replied Goisvintha fiercely. "The trea- ing under this persuasion, they committed the sures within that city will buy its safety from study of medicine, the interpretation of dreams, our King, as soon as the tremblers on the ram- and, in many instances, the mysteries of commuparts gain heart enough to penetrate a Gothic nication with the invisible world, to the care of camp. Where is the vengeance that you promtheir women. The gentler sex became their ised me among those distant palaces? Do I counselors in difficulty, and their physicians in ebold you carrying that destruction through the sickness,-their companions rather than their wellings of Rome, which the soldiers of yonder mistresses,-the objects of their veneration rather aty carried through the dwellings of the Goths? than the purveyors of their pleasures Although Is it for plunder or for glory that the army is in after years, the national migrations of the here! I thought, in my woman's delusion, that it Goths changed the national temperament, alwas for revenge!" though their ancient mythology was exchanged for the worship of Christ, this prevailing sentiment of their earliest existence as a people never entirely deserted them; but, with different modifications and in different forms, maintained much of its old supremacy through all changes of manners and varieties of customs, descending finally to their posterity among the present nations of Europe, in the shape of that established code of universal courtesy to women, which is admitted to be one great distinguishing mark between the social systems of the inhabitants of civilized and uncivilized lands.* I have sworn This powerful and remarkable ascendancy of that the blood which stains and darkens it, shall the woman over the man, among the Goths, be washed off in the blood of the people of could hardly be more strikingly displayed than in Rome. Though I should perish under those the instance of Hermanric. It appeared not only accursed walls; though you in your soulless in the deteriorating effect of the constant compatience should refuse me protection and aid; I, panionship of Goisvintha on his naturally manly widowed, weakened, forsaken as I am, will hold character, but also in the strong influence over to the fulfillment of my oath!" his mind of the last words that she had spoken. His eyes gleamed with anger, his cheeks flushed with shame, as he listened to those passages in her wrathful remonstrance which reflected most "Dishonor will avenge you- Famine will avenge you-Pestilence will avenge you!" They will avenge my nation; they will not avenge me. I have seen the blood of Gothic women spilt around me-I have looked on my childrens' corpses bleeding at my feet! Will a famine that I cannot see, and a pestilence that I cannot watch, give me vengeance for this? Look! Here is the helmet-crest of my husband and your brother-the helmet-crest that was dung to me as a witness that the Romans had slain him! Since the massacre of Aquileia it has never quitted my bosom. As she ceased she folded the crest in her mantle, and turned abruptly from Hermanric in bitter and undissembled scorn. All the attributes f her sex, in thought, expression, and manner, seemed to have deserted her. The very tones she spoke in were harsh and unwomanly. bitterly on himself. She had scarcely ceased, and turned to retire into the tent, when he arrested her progress, and replied, in hightened and accusing tones: When I Every word she had uttered, every action she had displayed, had sunk into the inmost heart, "You wrong me by your words! had stirred the fiercest passions of the young saw you among the Alps, did I refuse you prowarrior whom she addressed. The first national tection? When the child was wounded, did I sentiment discoverable in the day-spring of the leave him to suffer unaided? When he died, did ages of Gothic history, is the love of war; but I forsake him to rot upon the earth, or abandon the second is the reverence of woman. This to his mother the digging of his grave? When latter feeling-especially remarkable among so we approached Aquileia, and marched past Rafierce and unsusceptible a people as the ancient venna, did I forget that the sword hung at my Scandinavians was entirely unconnected with shoulder? Was it at my will that it remained those strong attaching ties, which are the natural sheathed, or that I entered not the gates of the consequence of the warm temperaments of the Roman towns, but passed them by in haste? Was more southern nations; for love was numbered it not the command of the king that withheld with the base inferior passions, in the frigid and me; and could I, his warrior, disobey? I swear hardy composition of the warrior of the north. It was the offspring of reasoning and observation, * See Mallet's "Northern Antiquities." |