Luise von Muhlbach - "Mohammed Ali and His House"

Constant - "Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, V2"

John Lothrop Motley - "History of the United Netherlands, 1592"

Grant Allen - "Michael's Crag"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: Antonina

W >> Wilkie Collins >> Antonina




'But you forget your duties,' urged the astonished Pompeianus, turning
from rebuke to expostulation. 'You forget that it is a time when all
private interests must be abandoned! You forget that I have come here
to ask your advice, that I am bewildered by a thousand projects, forced
on me from all sides, for ruling the city successfully during the
blockade; that I look to you, as a friend and a man of reputation, to
aid me in deciding on a choice out of the varied counsels submitted to
me in the Senate to-day.'

'Write down the advice of each senator on a separate strip of vellum;
shake all the strips together in an urn; and then, let the first you
take out by chance, be your guide to govern by in the present condition
of the city!' said Vetranio with a sneer.

'Oh friend, friend! it is cruel to jest with me thus!' cried the
Prefect, in tones of lament; 'Would you really persuade me that you are
ignorant that what sentinels we have, are doubled already on the walls?
Would you attempt to declare seriously to me, that you never heard the
project of Saturninus for reducing imperceptibly the diurnal allowance
of provisions? Or the recommendation of Emilianus, that the people
should be kept from thinking on the dangers and extremities which now
threaten them, by being provided incessantly with public amusements at
the theatres and hippodromes? Do you really mean that you are
indifferent to the horrors of our present situation? By the souls of
the Apostles, Vetranio, I begin to think that you do not believe in the
Goths!'

'I have already told you that private affairs occupy me at present, to
the exclusion of public,' said Vetranio impatiently. 'Debate as you
choose--approve what projects you will--I withdraw myself from
interference in your deliberations!'


'This,' murmured the repulsed Prefect in soliloquy, as he mechanically
resumed his place at the refreshment table, 'this is the very end and
climax of all calamities! Now, when advice and assistance are more
precious than jewels in my estimation, I receive neither! I gain from
none, the wise and saving counsels which, as chief magistrate of this
Imperial City, it is my right to demand from all; and the man on whom I
most depended is the man who fails me most! Yet hear me, oh Vetranio,
once again,' he continued, addressing the Senator, 'if our perils beyond
the walls affect you not, there is a weighty matter that has been
settled within them, which must move you. After you had quitted the
Senate, Serena, the widow of Stilicho, was accused, as her husband was
accused before her, of secret and treasonable correspondence with the
Goths; and has been condemned, as her husband was condemned, to suffer
the penalty of death. I myself discerned no evidence to convict her;
but the populace cried out, in universal frenzy, that she was guilty,
that she should die; and that the barbarians, when they heard of the
punishment inflicted on their secret adherent, would retire in dismay
from Rome. This also was a moot point of argument, on which I vainly
endeavoured to decide; but the Senate and the people were wiser than I;
and Serena was condemned to be strangled to-morrow by the public
executioner. She was a woman of good report before this time, and is
the adopted mother of the Emperor. It is now doubted by many whether
Stilicho, her husband, was ever guilty of the correspondence with the
Goths, of which he was accused; and I, on my part, doubt much that
Serena has deserved the punishment of death at our hands. I beseech
you, Vetranio, let me be enlightened by your opinion on this one point
at least!'

The Prefect waited anxiously for an answer, but Vetranio neither looked
at him nor replied. It was evident that the Senator had not listened to
a word that he had said!

This reception of his final appeal for assistance, produced the effect
on the petitioner, which it was perhaps designed to convey--the Prefect
Pompeianus quitted the room in despair.

He had not long departed, when Carrio again entered the apartment, and
addressed his master thus:

'It is grievous for me, revered patron, to disclose it to you, but your
slaves have returned unsuccessful from the search!'

'Give the description of the girl to a fresh division of them, and let
them continue their efforts throughout the night, not only in the
streets, but in all the houses of public entertainment in the city. She
must be in Rome, and she must be found!' said the senator gloomily.

Carrio bowed profoundly, and was about to depart, when he was arrested
at the door by his master's voice.

'If an old man, calling himself Numerian, should desire to see me,' said
Vetranio, 'admit him instantly.'

'She had quitted the room but a short time when I attempted to reclaim
her,' pursued the senator, speaking to himself; 'and yet when I gained
the open air, she was nowhere to be seen! She must have mingled
unintentionally with the crowds whom the Goths drove into the city, and
thus have eluded my observation! So young and so innocent! She must be
found! She must be found!'

He paused, once more engrossed in deep and melancholy thought. After a
long interval, he was roused form his abstraction by the sound of
footsteps on the marble floor. He looked up. The door had been opened
without his perceiving it, and an old man was advancing with slow and
trembling steps towards his silken couch. It was the bereaved and
broken-hearted Numerian.

'Where is she? Is she found?' asked the father, gazing anxiously round
the room, as if he had expected to see his daughter there.

'My slaves still search for her,' said Vetranio, mournfully.

'Ah, woe--woe--woe! How I wronged her! How I wronged her!' cried the
old man, turning to depart.


'Listen to me ere you go,' said Vetranio, gently detaining him. 'I have
done you a great wrong, but I will yet atone for it by finding for you
your child! While there were women who would have triumphed in my
admiration, I should not have attempted to deprive you of your daughter!
Remember when you recover her--and you shall recover her--that from the
time when I first decoyed her into listening to my lute, to the night
when your traitorous servant led me to her bed-chamber, she has been
innocent in this ill-considered matter. I alone have been guilty! She
was scarcely awakened when you discovered her in my arms, and my entry
into her chamber, was as little expected by her, as it was by you. I
was bewildered by the fumes of wine and the astonishment of your sudden
appearance, or I should have rescued her from your anger, ere it was too
late! The events which have passed this morning, confused though they
were, have yet convinced me that I had mistaken you both. I now know
that your child was too pure to be an object fitted for my pursuit; and
I believe that in secluding her as you did, however ill-advised you
might appear, you were honest in your design! Never in my pursuit of
pleasure did I commit so fatal an error, as when I entered the doors of
your house!'

In pronouncing these words, Vetranio but gave expression to the
sentiments by which they were really inspired. As we have before
observed, profligate as he was by thoughtlessness of character and
license of social position, he was neither heartless nor criminal by
nature. Fathers had stormed, but his generosity had hitherto invariably
pacified them. Daughters had wept, but had found consolation on all
previous occasions in the splendour of his palace and the amiability of
his disposition. In attempting, therefore, the abduction of Antonina,
though he had prepared for unusual obstacles, he had expected no worse
results of his new conquest, than those that had followed, as yet, his
gallantries that were past. But, when--in the solitude of his own home,
and in the complete possession of his faculties--he recalled all the
circumstances of his attempt, from the time when he had stolen on the
girl's slumbers, to the moment when she had fled from the house; when he
remembered the stern concentrated anger of Numerian, and the agony and
despair of Antonina; when he thought on the spirit-broken repentance of
the deceived father, and the fatal departure of the injured daughter, he
felt as a man who had not merely committed an indiscretion, but had been
guilty of a crime; he became convinced that he had incurred the fearful
responsibility of destroying the happiness of a parent who was really
virtuous, and a child who was truly innocent. To a man, the business of
whose whole life was to procure for himself a heritage of unalloyed
pleasure, whose sole occupation was to pamper that refined sensuality
which the habits of a life had made the very material of his heart, by
diffusing luxury and awakening smiles wherever he turned his steps, the
mere mental disquietude attending the ill-success of his intrusion into
Numerian's dwelling, was as painful in its influence, as the bitterest
remorse that could have afflicted a more highly-principled mind. He
now, therefore, instituted the search after Antonina, and expressed his
contrition to her father, from a genuine persuasion that nothing but the
completest atonement for the error he had committed, could restore to
him that luxurious tranquility, the loss of which had, as he had himself
expressed it, rendered him deaf to the deliberations of the Senate, and
regardless of the invasion of the Goths.

'Tell me,' he continued, after a pause, 'whither has Ulpius betaken
himself? It is necessary that he should be discovered. He may
enlighten us upon the place of Antonina's retreat. He shall be secured
and questioned.'

'He left me suddenly; I saw him as I stood at the window, mix with the
multitude in the street, but I know not whither he is gone,' replied
Numerian; and a tremor passed over his whole frame as he spoke of the
remorseless Pagan.

Again there was a short silence. The grief of the broken-spirited
father, possessed in its humility and despair, a voice of rebuke, before
which the senator, careless and profligate as he was, instinctively
quailed. For some time he endeavoured in vain to combat the silencing
and reproving influence, exerted over him by the very presence of the
sorrowing man whom he had so fatally wronged. At length, after an
interval, he recovered self-possession enough to address to Numerian
some further expressions of consolation and hope; but he spoke to ears
that listened not. The father had relapsed into his mournful
abstraction; and when the senator paused, he merely muttered to
himself--'She is lost! Alas, she is lost for ever!'

'No, she is not lost for ever,' cried Vetranio, warmly. 'I have wealth
and power enough to cause her to be sought for to the ends of the earth!
Ulpius shall be secured and questioned--imprisoned, tortured, if it is
necessary. Your daughter shall be recovered. Nothing is impossible to
a senator of Rome!'


'I knew not that I loved her, until the morning when I wronged and
banished her!' continued the old man, still speaking to himself. 'I
have lost all traces of my parents and my brother--my wife is parted
from me for ever--I have nothing left but Antonina; and now too she is
gone! Even my ambition, that I once thought my all in all, is no
comfort to my soul; for I loved it--alas! unconsciously loved it--
through the being of my child! I destroyed her lute--I thought her
shameless--I drove her from my doors! Oh, how I wronged her!--how I
wronged her!'

'Remain here, and repose yourself in one of the sleeping apartments,
until my slaves return in the morning. You will then hear without delay
of the result of their search to-night,' said Vetranio, in kindly and
compassionate tones.

'It grows dark--dark!' groaned the father, tottering towards the door;
'but that is nothing; daylight itself now looks darkness to me! I must
go: I have duties at the chapel to perform. Night is repose for you--
for me, it is tribulation and prayer!'

He departed as he spoke. Slowly he paced along the streets that led to
his chapel, glancing with penetrating eye at each inhabitant of the
besieged city who passed him on his way. With some difficulty he
arrived at his destination; for Rome was still thronged with armed men
hurrying backwards and forwards, and with crowds of disorderly citizens
pouring forth, wherever there was space enough for them to assemble.
The report of the affliction that had befallen him had already gone
abroad among his hearers, and they whispered anxiously to each other as
he entered the plain, dimly-lighted chapel, and slowly mounted the
pulpit to open the service, by reading the chapter in the Bible which
had been appointed for perusal that night, and which happened to be the
fifth of the Gospel of St. Mark. His voice trembled, his face was
ghastly pale, and his hands shook perceptibly as he began; but he read
on, in low, broken tones, and with evident pain and difficulty, until he
came to the verse containing these words: 'My little daughter lieth at
the point of death.' Here he stopped suddenly, endeavoured vainly for a
few minutes to proceed, and then, covering his face with his hands, sank
down in the pulpit and sobbed aloud. His sorrowing and startled audience
immediately gathered round him, raised him in their arms, and prepared
to conduct him to his own abode. When, however, they had gained the
door of the chapel, he desired them gently, to leave him and return to
the performance of the service among themselves. Ever implicitly
obedient to his slightest wishes, the persons of his little assembly,
moved to tears by the sight of their teacher's suffering, obeyed him, by
retiring silently to their former places. As soon as he found that he
was alone, he passed the door; and whispering to himself, 'I must join
those who seek her! I must aid them myself in the search!'--he mingled
once more with the disorderly citizens who thronged the darkened
streets.


CHAPTER 10. THE RIFT IN THE WALL.

When Ulpius suddenly departed from Numerian's house on the morning of
the siege, it was with no distinct intention of betaking himself to any
particular place, or devoting himself to any immediate employment. It
was to give vent to his joy--to the ecstacy that now filled his heart to
bursting--that he sought the open streets. His whole moral being was
exalted by that overwhelming sense of triumph, which urges the physical
nature into action. He hurried into the free air, as a child runs on a
bright day in the wide fields; his delight was too wild to expand under
a roof; his excess of bliss swelled irrepressibly beyond all artificial
limits of space.


The Goths were in sight! A few hours more, and their scaling ladders
would be planted against the walls. On a city so weakly guarded as
Rome, their assault must be almost instantaneously successful.
Thirsting for plunder, they would descend in infuriated multitudes on
the defenceless streets. Christians though they were, the restraints of
religion would, in that moment of fierce triumph, be powerless with such
a nation of marauders against the temptations to pillage. Churches
would be ravaged and destroyed; priests would be murdered in attempting
the defence of their ecclesiastical treasures; fire and sword would
waste to its remotest confines the stronghold of Christianity, and
overwhelm in death and oblivion the boldest of Christianity's devotees!
Then, when the hurricane of ruin and crime had passed over the city,
when a new people were ripe for another government and another
religion--then would be the time to invest the banished gods of old Rome
with their former rule; to bid the survivors of the stricken multitude
remember the judgment that their apostacy to their ancient faith had
demanded and incurred; to strike the very remembrance of the Cross out
of the memory of man; and to reinstate Paganism on her throne of
sacrifices, and under her roof of gold, more powerful from her past
persecutions; more universal in her sudden restoration, than in all the
glories of her ancient rule!

Such thoughts as these passed through the Pagan's toiling mind as,
unobservant of all outward events, he paced through the streets of the
beleaguered city. Already he beheld the array of the Goths preparing
the way, as the unconscious pioneers of the returning gods, for the
march of that mighty revolution which he was determined to lead. The
warmth of his past eloquence, the glow of his old courage, thrilled
through his heart, as he figured to himself the prospect that would soon
stretch before him--a city laid waste, a people terrified, a government
distracted, a religion destroyed. Then, arising amid this darkness and
ruin; amid this solitude, desolation, and decay, it would be his
glorious privilege to summon an unfaithful people to return to the
mistress of their ancient love; to rise from prostration beneath a
dismantled Church; and to seek prosperity in temples repeopled and at
shrines restored!

All remembrance of late events now entirely vanished from his mind.
Numerian, Vetranio, Antonina, they were all forgotten in this memorable
advent of the Goths! His slavery in the mines, his last visit to
Alexandria, his earlier wanderings--even these, so present to his memory
until the morning of the siege, were swept from its very surface now.
Age, solitude, infirmity--hitherto the mournful sensations which were
proofs to him that he still continued to exist--suddenly vanished from
his perceptions, as things that were not; and now at length he forgot
that he was an outcast, and remembered triumphantly that he was still a
priest. He felt animated by the same hopes, elevated by the same
aspirations, as in those early days when he had harangued the wavering
Pagans in the Temple, and first plotted the overthrow of the Christian
Church.

It was a terrible and warning proof of the omnipotent influence that a
single idea may exercise over a whole life, to see that old man
wandering among the crowds around him, still enslaved, after years of
suffering and solitude, degradation, and crime, by the same ruling
ambition, which had crushed the promise of his early youth! It was an
awful testimony to the eternal and mysterious nature of thought, to
behold that wasted and weakened frame; and then to observe how the
unassailable mind within still swayed the wreck of body yet left to it--
how faithfully the last exhausted resources of failing vigour rallied
into action at its fierce command--how quickly, at its mocking voice,
the sunken eye lightened again with a gleam of hope, and the pale, thin
lips parted mechanically with an exulting smile!

The hours passed, but he still walked on--whither or among whom he
neither knew nor cared. No remorse touched his heart for the
destruction that he had wreaked on the Christian who had sheltered him;
no terror appalled his soul at the contemplation of the miseries that he
believed to be in preparation for the city from the enemy at its gates.
The end that had hallowed to him the long series of his former offences
and former sufferings, now obliterated iniquities just passed, and
stripped of all their horrors, atrocities immediately to come.

The Goths might be destroyers to others, but they were benefactors to
him; for they were harbingers of the ruin which would be the material of
his reform, and the source of his triumph. It never entered his
imagination that, as an inhabitant of Rome, he shared the approaching
perils of the citizens, and in the moment of the assault might share
their doom. He beheld only the new and gorgeous prospect that war and
rapine were opening before him. He thought only of the time that must
elapse ere his new efforts could be commenced--of the orders of the
people among whom he should successively make his voice heard--of the
temples which he should select for restoration--of the quarter of Rome
which should first be chosen for the reception of his daring reform.


At length he paused; his exhausted energies yielded under the exertions
imposed on them, and obliged him to bethink himself of refreshment and
repose. It was now noon. The course of his wanderings had insensibly
conducted him again to the precincts of his old, familiar dwelling-
place; he found himself at the back of the Pincian Mount, and only
separated by a strip of uneven woody ground, from the base of the city
wall. The place was very solitary. It was divided from the streets and
mansions above by thick groves and extensive gardens, which stretched
along the undulating descent of the hill. A short distance to the
westward lay the Pincian Gate, but an abrupt turn in the wall and some
olive trees which grew near it, shut out all view of objects in that
direction. On the other side, towards the eastward, the ramparts were
discernible, running in a straight line of some length, until they
suddenly turned inwards at a right angle and were concealed from further
observation by the walls of a distant palace and the pine trees of a
public garden. The only living figure discernible near this lonely
spot, was that of a sentinel, who occasionally passed over the ramparts
above, which--situated as they were between two stations of soldiery,
one at the Pincian Gate and the other where the wall made the angle
already described--were untenanted, save by the guard within the limits
of whose watch they happened to be placed. Here, for a short space of
time, the Pagan rested his weary frame, and aroused himself insensibly
from the enthralling meditations which had hitherto blinded him to the
troubled aspect of the world around him.

He now for the first time heard on all sides distinctly, the confused
noises which still rose from every quarter of Rome. The same incessant
strife of struggling voices and hurrying footsteps, which had caught his
ear in the early morning, attracted his attention now; but no shrieks of
distress, no clash of weapons, no shouts of fury and defiance, were
mingled with them; although, as he perceived by the position of the sun,
the day had sufficiently advanced to have brought the Gothic army long
since to the foot of the walls. What could be the cause of this delay
in the assault; of this ominous tranquillity on the ramparts above him?
Had the impetuosity of the Goths suddenly vanished at the sight of Rome?
Had negotiations for peace been organised with the first appearance of
the invaders? He listened again. No sounds caught his ear differing in
character from those he had just heard. Though besieged, the city was
evidently--from some mysterious cause--not even threatened by an
assault.

Suddenly there appeared from a little pathway near him, which led round
the base of the wall, a woman preceded by a child, who called to her
impatiently, as he ran on, 'Hasten, mother, hasten! There is no crowd
here. Yonder is the Gate. We shall have a noble view of the Goths!'

There was something in the address of the child to the woman that gave
Ulpius a suspicion, even then, of the discovery that flushed upon him
soon after. He rose and followed them. They passed onward by the wall,
through the olive trees beyond, and then gained the open space before
the Pincian Gate. Here a great concourse of people had assembled, and
were suffered, in their proper turn, to ascend the ramparts in
divisions, by some soldiers who guarded the steps by which they were
approached. After a short delay, Ulpius and those around him were
permitted to gratify their curiosity, as others had done before them.
They mounted the walls, and beheld, stretched over the ground within and
beyond the suburbs, the vast circumference of the Gothic lines.

Terrible and almost sublime as was the prospect of that immense
multitude, seen under the brilliant illumination of the noontide sun, it
was not impressive enough to silence the turbulent loquacity rooted in
the dispositions of the people of Rome. Men, women, and children, all
made their noisy and conflicting observations on the sight before them,
in every variety of tone, from the tremulous accents of terror, to the
loud vociferations of bravado.


Some spoke boastfully of the achievements that would be performed by the
Romans, when their expected auxiliaries arrived from Ravenna. Others
foreboded, in undissembled terror, an assault under cover of the night.
Here, a group abused, in low confidential tones, the policy of the
government in its relations with the Goths. There, a company of ragged
vagabonds amused themselves by pompously confiding to each other their
positive conviction, that at that very moment the barbarians must be
trembling in their camp, at the mere sight of the all-powerful Capital
of the World. In one direction, people were heard noisily speculating
whether the Goths would be driven from the walls by the soldiers of
Rome, or be honoured by an invitation to conclude a peace with the
august Empire, which they had so treasonably ventured to invade. In
another, the more sober and reputable among the spectators audibly
expressed their apprehensions of starvation, dishonour, and defeat,
should the authorities of the city be foolhardy enough to venture a
resistance to Alaric and his barbarian hosts. But wide as was the
difference of the particular opinions hazarded among the citizens, they
all agreed in one unavoidable conviction, that Rome had escaped the
immediate horrors of an assault, to be threatened--if unaided by the
legions at Ravenna--by the prospective miseries of a blockade.