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'Beautiful earth!' she murmured softly to herself, 'Thy mountains are
the watch-towers of angels, thy moonlight is the shadow of God!'

Her eyes filled with bright, happy tears; she turned to Hermanric, who
stood watching her, and continued:--

'Have you never thought that light, and air, and the perfume of flowers,
might contain some relics of the beauties of Eden that escaped with Eve,
when she wandered into the lonely world? They glowed and breathed for
her, and she lived and was beautiful in them! They were united to one
another, as the sunbeam is united to the earth that it warms; and could
the sword of the cherubim have sundered them at once? When Eve went
forth, did the closed gates shut back in the empty Paradise, all the
beauty that had clung, and grown, and shone round her? Did no ray of
her native light steal forth after her into the desolateness of the
world? Did no print of her lost flowers remain on the bosom they must
once have pressed? It cannot be! A part of her possessions of Eden
must have been spared to her with a part of her life. She must have
refined the void air of the earth when she entered it, with a breath of
the fragrant breezes, and gleam of the truant sunshine of her lost
Paradise! They must have strengthened and brightened, and must now be
strengthening and brightening with the slow lapse of mortal years,
until, in the time when earth itself will be an Eden, they shall be made
one again with the hidden world of perfection, from which they are yet
separated. So that, even now, as I look forth over the landscape, the
light that I behold has in it a glow of Paradise, and this flower that I
gather a breath of the fragrance that once stole over the senses of my
first mother, Eve!'

Though she paused here, as if in expectation of an answer, the Goth
preserved an unbroken silence. Neither by nature nor position was he
capable of partaking the wild fancies and aspiring thoughts, drawn by
the influences of the external world from their concealment in
Antonina's heart.

The mystery of his present situation; his vague remembrance of the
duties he had abandoned; the uncertainty of his future fortunes and
future fate; the presence of the lonely being so inseparably connected
with his past emotions and his existence to come, so strangely
attractive by her sex, her age, her person, her misfortunes, and her
endowments; all contributed to bewilder his faculties. Goisvintha, the
army, the besieged city, the abandoned suburbs, seemed to hem him in
like a circle of shadowy and threatening judgments; and in the midst of
them stood the young denizen of Rome, with her eloquent countenance and
her inspiring words, ready to hurry him, he knew not whither, and able
to influence him, he felt not how.

Unconsciously interpreting her companion's silence into a wish to change
the scene and the discourse, Antonina, after lingering over the view
from the garden for a moment longer, led the way back towards the
untenanted house. They removed the wooden padlock from the door of the
dwelling, and guided by the brilliant moonlight, entered its principal
apartment.

The homely adornments of the little room had remained undisturbed, and
dimly distinguishable though they now were, gave it to the eyes of the
two strangers, the same aspect of humble comfort which had probably once
endeared it to its exiled occupants. As Hermanric seated himself by
Antonina's side on the simple couch which made the principal piece of
furniture in the place, and looked forth from the window over the same
view that they had beheld in the garden, the magic stillness and novelty
of the scene now began to affect his slow perceptions, as they had
already influenced the finer and more sensitive faculties of the
thoughtful girl. New hopes and tranquil ideas arose in his young mind,
and communicated an unusual gentleness to his expression, an unusual
softness to his voice, as he thus addressed his silent companion:--

'With such a home as this, with this garden, with that country beyond,
with no warfare, no stern teachers, no enemy to threaten you; with
companions and occupations that you loved--tell me, Antonina, would not
your happiness be complete?'

As he looked round at the girl to listen to her reply, he saw that her
countenance had changed. Their past expression of deep grief had again
returned to her features. Her eyes were fixed on the short dagger that
hung over the Goth's breast, which seemed to have suddenly aroused in
her a train of melancholy and unwelcome thoughts. When she at length
spoke, it was in a mournful and altered voice, and with a mingled
expression of resignation and despair.

'You must leave me--we must be parted again,' said she; 'the sight of
your weapons has reminded me of all that until now I had forgotten, of
all that I have left in Rome, of all that you have abandoned before the
city walls. Once I thought we might have escaped together from the
turmoil and the danger around us, but now I know that it is better that
you should depart! Alas! for my hopes and my happiness, I must be left
alone once more!'

She paused for an instant, struggling to retain her self-possession, and
then continued:--

'Yes, you must quit me, and return to your post before the city; for in
the day of assault there will be none to care for my father but you!
Until I know that he is safe, until I can see him once more, and ask him
for pardon, and entreat him for love, I dare not remove from the
perilous precincts of Rome! Return, then, to your duties, and your
companions, and your occupations of martial renown; and do not forget
Numerian when the city is assailed, nor Antonina, who is left to think
on you in the solitary plains!'

She rose from her place, as if to set the example of departing; but her
strength and resolution both failed her, and she sank down again on the
couch, incapable of making another movement, or uttering another word.

Strong and conflicting emotions passed over the heart of the Goth. The
language of the girl had quickened the remembrance of his half-forgotten
duties, and strengthened the failing influence of his old predilections
of education and race. Both conscience and inclination now opposed his
disputing her urgent and unselfish request. For a few minutes he
remained in deep reflection; then he rose and looked earnestly from the
window; then back again upon Antonina and the room they occupied. At
length, as if animated by a sudden determination, he again approached
his companion, and thus addressed her:--

'It is right that I should return. I will do your bidding, and depart
for the camp (but not till the break of day), while you, Antonina,
remain in concealment and in safety here. None can come hither to
disturb you. The Goths will not revisit the fields they have already
stripped; the husbandman who owns this dwelling is imprisoned in the
beleaguered city; the peasants from the country beyond dare not approach
so near to the invading hosts; and Goisvintha, whom you dread, knows not
even of the existence of such a refuge as this. Here, though lonely,
you will be secure; here you can await my return, when each succeeding
night gives me the opportunity of departing from the camp; and here I
will warn you beforehand, if the city is devoted to an assault. Though
solitary, you will not be abandoned--we shall not be parted one from the
other. Often and often I shall return to look on you, and to listen to
you, and to love you! You will be happier here, even in this lonely
place, than in the former home that you have lost through your father's
wrath!'

'Oh! I will willingly remain--I will joyfully await you!' cried the
girl, raising her beaming eyes to Hermanric's face. 'I will never speak
mournfully to you again; I will never remind you more of all that I have
suffered, and all that I have lost! How merciful you were to me, when I
first saw you in your tent--how doubly merciful you are to me here! I
am proud when I look on your stature, and your strength, and your heavy
weapons, and know that you are happy in remaining with me; that you will
succour my father; that you will return from your glittering encampments
to this farm-house, where I am left to await you! Already I have
forgotten all that has happened to me of woe; already I am more joyful
than ever I was in my life before! See, I am no longer weeping in
sorrow! If there are any tears still on my cheeks, they are the tears
of gladness that every one welcomes--tears to sing and rejoice in!'

She ceased abruptly, as if words failed to give expression to her new
delight. All the gloomy emotions that had oppressed her but a short
time before had now completely vanished; and the young, fresh heart,
superior still to despair and woe, basked as happily again in its native
atmosphere of joy as a bird in the sunlight of morning and spring.

Then, when after an interval of delay their former tranquility had
returned to them, how softly and lightly the quiet hours of the
remaining night flowed onward to the two watchers in the lonely house!
How gladly the delighted girl disclosed her hidden thoughts, and poured
forth her innocent confessions, to the dweller among other nations and
the child of other impressions than her own! All the various reflections
aroused in her mind by the natural objects she had secretly studied, by
the mighty imagery of her Bible lore, by the gloomy histories of saints'
visions and martyrs' sufferings, which she had learnt and pondered over
by her father's side, were now drawn from their treasured places in her
memory, and addressed to the ear of the Goth. As the child flies to the
nurse with the story of its first toy; as the girl resorts to the sister
with the confession of her first love; as the poet hurries to the friend
with the plan of his first composition; so did Antonina seek the
attention of Hermanric with the first outward revealings enjoyed by her
faculties and the first acknowledgment of her emotions liberated from
her heart.

The longer the Goth listened to her, the more perfect became the
enchantment of her words, half struggling into poetry, and her voice
half gliding into music. As her low, still, varying tones wound
smoothly into his ear, his thoughts suddenly and intuitively reverted to
her formerly expressed remembrances of her lost lute, inciting him to
ask her, with new interest and animation, of the manner of her
acquisition of that knowledge of song, which she had already assured him
that she possessed.

'I have learned many odes of many poets,' said she, quickly and
confusedly avoiding the mention of Vetranio, which a direct answer to
Hermanric's question must have produced, 'but I remember none perfectly,
save those whose theme is of spirits and of other worlds, and of the
invisible beauty that we think of but cannot see. Of the few that I
know of these, there is one that I first learned and loved most. I will
sing it, that you may be assured I will not fail to you in my promised
art.'

She hesitated for a moment. Sorrowful remembrances of the events that
had followed the utterance of the last notes she sang in her father's
garden, swelled within her, and held her speechless. Soon, however,
after a short interval of silence, she recovered her self-possession,
and began to sing, in low tremulous tones, that harmonised well with the
character of the words and the strain of the melody which she had
chosen.

THE MISSION OF THE TEAR

I.

The skies were its birth-place--the TEAR was the child Of the dark
maiden SORROW, by young JOY beguil'd; It was born in convulsion; 'twas
nurtur'd in woe; And the world was yet young when it wander'd below.

II.

No angel-bright guardians watch'd over its birth, Ere yet it was
suffer'd to roam upon earth; No spirits of gladness its soft form
caress'd; SIGHS mourned round its cradle, and hush'd it to rest.

III.

Though JOY might endeavour, with kisses and wiles, To lure it away to
his household of smiles: From the daylight he lived in it turn'd in
affright, To nestle with SORROW in climates of night.

IV.

When it came upon earth, 'twas to choose a career, The brightest and
best that is left to a TEAR; To hallow delight, and bestow the relief
Denied by despair to the fulness of grief.

V.

Few repell'd it--some bless'd it--wherever it came; Whether soft'ning
their sorrow, or soothing their shame; And the joyful themselves, though
its name they might fear, Oft welcom'd the calming approach of the TEAR!

VI.

Years on years have worn onward, as--watch'd from above--Speeds that
meek spirit yet on its labour of love; Still the exile of Heav'n, it
ne'er shall away, Every heart has a home for it, roam where it may!

For the first few minutes after she had concluded the ode, Hermanric was
hardly conscious that she had ceased; and when at length she looked up
at him, her mute petition for approval had an eloquence which would have
been marred to the Goth at that moment, by the utterance of single word.
A rapture, an inspiration, a new life moved within him. The hour and
the scene completed what the magic of the song had begun. His
expression now glowed with a southern warmth; his words assumed a Roman
fervour. Gradually, as they discoursed, the voice of the girl was less
frequently audible. A change was passing over her spirit; from the
teacher, she was now becoming the pupil.

As she still listened to the Goth, as she felt the birth of new feelings
within her while he spoke, her cheeks glowed, her features lightened up,
her very form seemed to freshen and expand. No intruding thought or
awakening remembrance disturbed her rapt attention. No cold doubt, no
gloomy hesitation, appeared in her companion's words. The one listened,
the other spoke, with the whole heart, the undivided soul. While a
world-wide revolution was concentrating its hurricane forces around
them; while the city of an Empire tottered already to its tremendous
fall; while Goisvintha plotted new revenge; while Ulpius toiled for his
revolution of bloodshed and ruin; while all these dark materials of
public misery and private strife seethed and strengthened around them,
they could as completely forget the stormy outward world, in themselves;
they could think as serenely of tranquil love; the kiss could be given
as passionately and returned as tenderly, as if the lot of their
existence had been cast in the pastoral days of the shepherd poets, and
the future of their duties and enjoyments was securely awaiting them in
a land of eternal peace!

CHAPTER 14. THE FAMINE.

The end of November is approaching. Nearly a month has elapsed since
the occurrence of the events mentioned in the last chapter, yet still
the Gothic lines stretch round the city walls. Rome, that we left
haughty and luxurious even while ruin threatened her at her gates, has
now suffered a terrible and warning change. As we approach her again,
woe, horror, and desolation have already gone forth to shadow her lofty
palaces and to darken her brilliant streets.

Over Pomp that spurned it, over Pleasure that defied it, over Plenty
that scared it in its secret rounds, the spectre Hunger has now risen
triumphant at last. Day by day has the city's insufficient allowance of
food been more and more sparingly doled out; higher and higher has risen
the value of the coarsest and simplest provision; the hoarded supplies
that pity and charity have already bestowed to cheer the sinking people
have reached their utmost limits. For the rich, there is still corn in
the city--treasure of food to be bartered for treasure of gold. For the
poor, man's natural nourishment exists no more; the season of famine's
loathsome feasts, the first days of the sacrifice of choice to necessity
have darkly and irretrievably begun.

It is morning. A sad and noiseless throng is advancing over the cold
flagstones of the great square before the Basilica of St. John Lateran.
The members of the assembly speak in whispers. The weak are tearful--the
strong are gloomy--they all move with slow and languid gait, and hold in
their arms their dogs or other domestic animals. On the outskirts of
the crowd march the enfeebled guards of the city, grasping in their
rough hands rare favourite birds of gaudy plumage and melodious note,
and followed by children and young girls vainly and piteously entreating
that their favourites may be restored.

This strange procession pauses, at length, before a mighty caldron slung
over a great fire in the middle of the square, round which stand the
city butchers with bare knives, and the trustiest men of the Roman
legions with threatening weapons. A proclamation is then repeated,
commanding the populace who have no money left to purchase food, to
bring up their domestic animals to be boiled together over the public
furnace, for the sake of contributing to the public support.

The next minute, in pursuance of this edict, the dumb favourites of the
crowd passed from the owner's caressing hand into the butcher's ready
grasp. The faint cries of the animals, starved like their masters,
mingled for a few moments with the sobs and lamentations of the women
and children, to whom the greater part of them belonged. For, in this
the first stage of their calamities, that severity of hunger which
extinguishes pity and estranges grief was unknown to the populace; and
though fast losing spirit, they had not yet sunk to the depths of
ferocious despair which even now were invisibly opening between them. A
thousand pangs were felt, a thousand humble tragedies were acted, in the
brief moments of separation between guardian and charge. The child
snatched its last kiss of the bird that had sung over its bed; the dog
looked its last entreaty for protection from the mistress who had once
never met it without a caress. Then came the short interval of agony
and death, then the steam rose fiercely from the greedy caldron, and
then the people for a time dispersed; the sorrowful to linger near the
confines of the fire, and the hungry to calm their impatience by a visit
to the neighbouring church.

The marble aisles of the noble basilica held a gloomy congregation.
Three small candles were alone lighted on the high altar. No sweet
voices sang melodious anthems or exulting hymns. The monks, in hoarse
tones and monotonous harmonics, chanted the penitential psalms. Here
and there knelt a figure clothed in mourning robes, and absorbed in
secret prayer; but over the majority of the assembly either blank
despondency or sullen inattention universally prevailed.

As the last dull notes of the last psalm died away among the lofty
recesses of the church, a procession of pious Christians appeared at the
door and advanced slowly to the altar. It was composed both of men and
women barefooted, clothed in black garments, and with ashes scattered
over their dishevelled hair. Tears flowed from their eyes, and they
beat their breasts as they bowed their foreheads on the marble pavement
of the altar steps.

This humble public expression of penitence under the calamity that had
now fallen on the city was, however, confined only to its few really
religious inhabitants, and commanded neither sympathy nor attention from
the heartless and obstinate population of Rome. Some still cherished
the delusive hope of assistance from the court at Ravenna; others
believed that the Goths would ere long impatiently abandon their
protracted blockade, to stretch their ravages over the rich and
unprotected fields of Southern Italy. But the same blind confidence in
the lost terrors of the Roman name, the same fierce and reckless
determination to defy the Goths to the very last, sustained the sinking
courage and suppressed the despondent emotions of the great mass of the
suffering people, from the beggar who prowled for garbage, to the
patrician who sighed over his new and unwelcome nourishment of simple
bread.

While the penitents who formed the procession above described were yet
engaged in the performance of their unnoticed and unshared duties of
penance and prayer, a priest ascended the great pulpit of the basilica,
to attempt the ungrateful task of preaching patience and piety to the
hungry multitude at his feet.

He began his sermon by retracing the principal occurrences in Rome since
the beginning of the Gothic blockade. He touched cautiously upon the
first event that stained the annals of the besieged city--the execution
of the widow of the Roman general Stilicho, on the unauthorised
suspicion that she had held treasonable communication with Alaric and
the invading army; he noticed lengthily the promises of assistance
transmitted from Ravenna, after the perpetration of that ill-omened act.
He spoke admiringly of the skill displayed by the government in making
the necessary and immediate reductions in the daily supplies of food; he
lamented the terrible scarcity which followed, too inevitably, those
seasonable reductions. He pronounced an eloquent eulogium on the noble
charity of Laeta, the widow of the Emperor Gratian, who, with her
mother, devoted the store of provisions obtained by their imperial
revenues to succouring, at that important juncture, the starving and
desponding poor: he admitted the new scarcity, consequent on the
dissipation of Laeta's stores; deplored the present necessity of
sacrificing the domestic animals of the citizens; condemned the enormous
prices now demanded for the last remnants of wholesome food that were
garnered up; announced it as the firm persuasion of every one that a few
days more would bring help from Ravenna; and ended his address by
informing his auditory that, as they had suffered so much already, they
could patiently suffer a little more, and that if, after this, they were
so ill-fated as to sink under their calamities, they would feel it a
noble consolation to die in the cause of Catholic and Apostolic Rome,
and would assuredly be canonised as saints and martyrs by the next
generation of the pious in the first interval of fertile and restoring
peace.

Flowing as was the eloquence of this oration, it yet possessed not the
power of inducing one among those whom it addressed to forget the
sensation of his present suffering, and to fix his attention on the
vision of future advantage, spread before all listeners by the fluent
priest. With the same murmurs of querulous complaint, and the same
expressions of impotent hatred and and defiance of the Goths which had
fallen from them as they entered the church, the populace now departed
from it, to receive from the city officers the stinted allowance of
repugnant food, prepared for their hunger from the caldron in the public
square.

And see, already from other haunts in the neighbouring quarter of Rome
their fellow-citizens press onward at the given signal, to meet them
round the caldron's sides! The languid sentinel, released from duty,
turns his gaze from the sickening prospect of the Gothic camp, and
hastens to share the public meal; the baker starts from sleeping on his
empty counter, the beggar rises from his kennel in the butcher's vacant
out-house, the slave deserts his place by the smouldering kitchen-fire--
all hurry to swell the numbers of the guests that are bidden to the
wretched feast. Rapidly and confusedly, the congregation in the basilica
pours through its lofty gates; the priests and penitents retire from the
altar's foot, and in the great church, so crowded by a few moments
before, there now only remains the figure of a solitary man.

Since the commencement of the service, neither addressed nor observed,
this lonely being has faltered round the circle of the congregation,
gazing long and wistfully over the faces that met his view. Now that
the sermon is ended, and the last lingerer has quitted the church, he
turns from the spot whence he has anxiously watched the different
members of the departing throng, and feebly crouches down on his knees
at the base of a pillar that is near him. His eyes are hollow, and his
cheeks are wan; his thin grey hairs are few and fading on his aged head.
He makes no effort to follow the crowd and partake their sustenance; no
one is left behind to urge, no one returns to lead him to the public
meal. Though weak and old, he is perfectly forsaken in his loneliness,
perfectly unsolaced in his grief; his friends have lost all trace of
him; his enemies have ceased to fear or to hate him now. As he crouches
by the pillar alone, he covers his forehead with his pale, palsied
hands, his dim eyes fill with bitter tears, and such expressions as
these are ever and anon faintly audible in the intervals of his heavy
sighs: 'Day after day! Day after day! And my lost one is not found!
my loved and wronged one is not restored! Antonina! Antonina!'

Some days after the public distribution of food in the square of St.
John Lateran, Vetranio's favourite freedman might have been observed
pursuing his way homeward, sadly and slowly, to his master's palace.

It was not without cause that the pace of the intelligent Carrio was
funereal and his expression disconsolate. Even during the short period
that had elapsed since the scene in the basilica already described, the
condition of the city had altered fearfully for the worse. The famine
advanced with giant strides; every succeeding hour endued it with new
vigour, every effort to repel it served but to increase its spreading
and overwhelming influence. One after another the pleasures and
pursuits of the city declined beneath the dismal oppression of the
universal ill, until the public spirit in Rome became moved alike in all
classes by one gloomy inspiration--a despairing defiance of the famine
and the Goths.

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