I. A. R. Wylie - "The Native Born"

Mary Godolphin - "Robinson Crusoe"

Samuel Johnson - "Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young etc."

Sydney Smith - "Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays"

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




The freedman entered his master's palace neither saluted nor welcomed by
the once obsequious slaves in the outer lodge. Neither harps nor
singing-boys, neither woman's ringing laughter nor man's bacchanalian
glee, now woke the echoes in the lonely halls. The pulse of pleasure
seemed to have throbbed its last in the joyless being of Vetranio's
altered household.

Hastening his steps as he entered the mansion, Carrio passed into the
chamber where the senator awaited him.

On two couches, separated by a small table, reclined the lord of the
palace and his pupil and companion at Ravenna, the once sprightly
Camilla. Vetranio's open brow had contracted a clouded and severe
expression, and he neither regarded nor addressed his visitor, who, on
her part, remained as silent and as melancholy as himself. Every trace
of the former characteristics of the gay, elegant voluptuary and the
lively, prattling girl seemed to have completely vanished. On the table
between them stood a large bottle containing Falernian wine, and a vase
filled with a little watery soup, in the middle of which floated a small
dough cake, sparingly sprinkled with common herbs. As for the usual
accompaniments of Vetranio's luxurious privacy, they were nowhere to be
seen. Poems, pictures, trinkets, lutes, all were absent. Even the
'inestimable kitten of the breed most worshipped by the ancient
Egyptians' appeared no more. It had been stolen, cooked, and eaten by a
runaway slave, who had already bartered its ruby collar for a lean
parrot and the unroasted half of the carcase of a dog.

'I lament to confess it, O estimable patron, but my mission has failed,'
observed Carrio, producing from his cloak several bags of money and
boxes of jewels, which he carefully deposited on the table. 'The
Prefect has himself assisted in searching the public and private
granaries, and has arrived at the conclusion that not a handful of corn
is left in the city. I offered publicly in the market-place five
thousand sestertii for a living cock and hen, but was told that the race
had long since been exterminated, and that, as money would no longer buy
food, money was no longer desired by the poorest beggar in Rome. There
is no more even of the hay I yesterday purchased to be obtained for the
most extravagant bribes. Those still possessing the smallest supplies
of provision guard and hide them with the most jealous care. I have
done nothing but obtain for the consumption of the few slaves who yet
remain faithful in the house this small store of dogs' hides, reserved
from the public distribution of some days since in the square of the
Basilica of St. John.'


And the freedman, with an air of mingled triumph and disgust, produced
as he spoke his provision of dirty skins.

'What supplies have we still left in our possession?' demanded Vetranio,
after drinking a deep draught of the Falernian, and motioning his
servant to place his treasured burden out of sight.

'I have hidden in a secure receptacle, for I know not how soon hunger
may drive the slaves to disobedience,' rejoined Carrio, 'seven bags of
hay, three baskets stocked with salted horse-flesh, a sweetmeat-box
filled with oats, and another with dried parsley; the rare Indian
singing birds are still preserved inviolate in their aviary; there is a
great store of spices, and some bottles of the Nightingale Sauce yet
remain.'

'What is the present aspect of the city?' interrupted Vetranio
impatiently.

'Rome is as gloomy as a subterranean sepulchre,' replied Carrio, with a
shudder. 'The people congregate in speechless and hungry mobs at the
doors of their houses and the corners of the streets, the sentinels at
the ramparts totter on their posts, women and children are sleeping
exhausted on the very pavements of the churches, the theatres are
emptied of actors and audience alike, the baths resound with cries for
food and curses on the Goths, thefts are already committed in the open
and unguarded shops, and the barbarians remain fixed in their
encampments, unapproached by our promised legions from Ravenna, neither
assaulting us in our weakness, nor preparing to raise the blockade! Our
situation grows more and more perilous. I have great hopes in our store
of provisions; but--'

'Cast your hopes to the court at Ravenna, and your beasts' provender to
the howling mob!' cried Vetranio with sudden energy. 'It is now too
late to yield; if the next few days bring us no assistance, the city
will be a human shambles! And think you that I, who have already lost
in this public suspension of social joys my pleasures, my employments,
and my companions, will wait serenely for the lingering and ignoble
death that must then threaten us all? No, it shall never be said that I
died starving with the herd, like a slave that his master deserts!
Though the plates in my banqueting hall must now be empty, my vases and
wine-cups shall yet sparkle for my guests! There is still wine in the
cellar, and spices and perfumes remain in the larder stores! I will
invite my friends to a last feast; a saturnalia in a city of famine; a
banquet of death, spread by the jovial labours of Silenus and his fauns!
Though the Parcae have woven for me the destiny of a dog, it is the hand
of Bacchus that shall sever the fatal thread!'

His cheeks were flushed, his eyes sparkled; all the mad energy of his
determination appeared in his face as he spoke. He was no longer the
light, amiable, smooth-tongued trifler, but a moody, reckless, desperate
man, careless of every obligation and pursuit which had hitherto
influenced the easy surface of his patrician life. The startled
Camilla, who had as yet preserved a melancholy silence, ran towards him
with affrighted looks and undissembled tears. Carrio stared in vacant
astonishment on his master's disordered countenance; and, forgetting his
bundle of dogskins, suffered them to drop unheeded on the floor. A
momentary silence followed, which was suddenly interrupted by the abrupt
entrance of a fourth person, pale, trembling and breathless, who was no
other than Vetranio's former visitor, the Prefect Pompeianus.

'I bid you welcome to my approaching feast of brimming wine-cups and
empty dishes!' cried Vetranio, pouring the sparkling Falernian into his
empty glass. 'The last banquet given in Rome, ere the city is
annihilated, will be mine! The Goths and the famine shall have no part
in my death! Pleasure shall preside at my last moments, as it has
presided at my whole life! I will die like Sardanapalus, with my loves
and my treasures around me, and the last of my guests who remains proof
against our festivity shall set fire to my palace, as the kingly
Assyrian set fire to his!'


'This is no season for jesting,' exclaimed the Prefect, staring round
him with bewildered eyes and colourless cheeks. 'Our miseries are but
dawning as yet! In the next street lies the corpse of a woman, and--
horrible omen!--a coil of serpents is wreathed about her neck! We have
no burial-place to receive her, and the thousands who may die like her,
ere assistance arrives. The city sepulchres outside the walls are in
the hands of the Goths. The people stand round the body in a trance of
horror, for they have now discovered a fatal truth we would fain have
concealed from them;' here the Prefect paused, looked round affrightedly
on his listeners, and then added in low trembling tones--

'The citizens are lying dead from famine in the streets of Rome!'


CHAPTER 15. THE CITY AND THE GODS.

We return once more to the Gothic encampment in the suburbs eastward of
the Pincian Gate, and to Hermanric and the warriors under his command,
who are still posted at that particular position on the great circle of
the blockade.

The movements of the young chieftain from place to place expressed, in
their variety and rapidity, the restlessness that was agitating his
mind. He glanced back frequently from the warriors around him to the
remote and opposite quarter of the suburbs, occasionally directing his
eyes towards the western horizon, as if anxiously awaiting the approach
of some particular hour of the coming night. Weary at length of pursuing
occupations which evidently irritated rather than soothed his
impatience, he turned abruptly from his companions, and advancing
towards the city, paced slowly backwards and forwards over the waste
ground between the suburbs and the walls of Rome.

At intervals he still continued to examine the scene around him. A more
dreary prospect than now met his view, whether in earth or sky, can
hardly be conceived.

The dull sunless day was fast closing, and the portentous heaven gave
promise of a stormy night. Thick, black layers of shapeless cloud hung
over the whole firmament, save at the western point; and here lay a
streak of pale, yellow light, enclosed on all sides by the firm,
ungraduated, irregular edges of the masses of gloomy vapour around it.
A deep silence hung over the whole atmosphere. The wind was voiceless
among the steady trees. The stir and action in the being of nature and
the life of man seemed enthralled, suspended, stifled. The air was
laden with a burdensome heat; and all things on earth, animate and
inanimate, felt the oppression that weighed on them from the higher
elements. The people who lay gasping for breath in the famine-stricken
city, and the blades of grass that drooped languidly on the dry sward
beyond the walls, owned the enfeebling influence alike.

As the hours wore on and night stealthily and gradually advanced, a
monotonous darkness overspread, one after another, the objects
discernible to Hermanric from the solitary ground he still occupied.
Soon the great city faded into one vast, impenetrable shadow, while the
suburbs and the low country around them vanished in the thick darkness
that gathered almost perceptibly over the earth. And now the sole
object distinctly visible was the figure of a weary sentinel, who stood
on the frowning rampart immediately above the rifted wall, and whose
drooping figure, propped upon his weapon, was indicated in hard relief
against the thin, solitary streak of light still shining in the cold and
cloudy wastes of the western sky.

But as the night still deepened, this one space of light faded,
contracted, vanished, and with it disappeared the sentinel and the line
of rampart on which he was posted. The rule of the darkness now became
universal. Densely and rapidly it overspread the whole city with
startling suddenness; as if the fearful destiny now working its
fulfilment in Rome had forced the external appearances of the night into
harmony with its own woe-boding nature.


Then, as the young Goth still lingered at his post of observation, the
long, low, tremulous, absorbing roll of thunder afar off became grandly
audible. It seemed to proceed from a distance almost incalculable; to
be sounding from its cradle in the frozen north; to be journeying about
its ice-girdled chambers in the lonely poles. It deepened rather than
interrupted the dreary, mysterious stillness of the atmosphere. The
lightning, too, had a summer softness in its noiseless and frequent
gleam. It was not the fierce lightning of winter, but a warm, fitful
brightness, almost fascinating in its light, rapid recurrence, tinged
with the glow of heaven, and not with the glare of hell.

There was no wind--no rain; and the air was as hushed as if it slept
over chaos in the infancy of a new creation.

Among the various objects displayed, instant by instant, by the rapid
lightning to the eyes of Hermanric, the most easily and most distinctly
visible was the broad surface of the rifted wall. The large, loose
stones, scattered here and there at its base, and the overhanging lid of
its broad rampart, became plainly though fitfully apparent in the brief
moments of their illumination. The lightning had played for some time
over that structure of the fortifications, and the bare ground that
stretched immediately beyond them, when the smooth prospect which it
thus gave by glimpses to view, was suddenly chequered by a flight of
birds appearing from one of the lower divisions of the wall, and
flitting uneasily to and fro at one spot before its surface.

As moment after moment the lightning continued to gleam, so the black
forms of the birds were visible to the practised eye of the Goth--
perceptible, yet evanescent, as sparks of fire or flakes of snow--
whirling confusedly and continually about the spot whence they had
evidently been startled by some unimaginable interruption. At length,
after a lapse of some time, they vanished as suddenly as they had
appeared, with shrill notes of affright which were audible even above
the continuous rolling of the thunder; and immediately afterwards, when
the lightning alternated with the darkness, there appeared to Hermanric,
in the part of the wall where the birds had been first disturbed, a
small red gleam, like a spark of fire lodged in the surface of the
structure. Then this was lost; a longer obscurity than usual prevailed
in the atmosphere, and when the Goth gazed eagerly through the next
succession of flashes, they showed him the momentary and doubtful
semblance of a human figure, standing erect on the stones at the base of
the wall.

Hermanric started with astonishment. Again the lightning ceased. In
the ardour of his anxiety to behold more, he strained his eyes with the
vain hope of penetrating the obscurity around him. The darkness seemed
interminable. Once again the lightning flashed brilliantly out. He
looked eagerly towards the wall--the figure was still there.

His heart throbbed quickly within him, as he stood irresolute on the
spot he had occupied since the first peal of thunder had struck upon his
ear. Were the light and the man--one seen but for an instant, the other
still perceptible--mere phantoms of his erring sight, dazzled by the
quick recurrence of atmospheric changes through which it had acted? Or
did he indubitably behold a human form, and had he really observed a
material light? Some strange treachery, some dangerous mystery might be
engendering in the besieged city, which it would be his duty to observe
and unmask. He drew his sword, and, at the risk of being observed
through the lightning, and heard during the pauses in the thunder, by
the sentinel on the wall, resolutely advanced to the very foot of the
fortifications of hostile Rome.

He heard no sound, perceived no light, observed no figure, as, after
several unsuccessful attempts to reach the place where they stood, he at
length paused at the loose stones which he knew were heaped at the base
of the wall. The next moment he was so close to it, that he could pass
his sword-point over parts of its rugged surface. He had scarcely
examined thus a space of more than ten yards, before his weapon
encountered a sharp, jagged edge; and a sudden presentiment assured him
instantly that he had found the spot where he had beheld the momentary
light, and that he stood on the same stone which had been occupied by
the figure of the man.


After an instant's hesitation, he was about to mount higher on the loose
stones, and examine more closely the irregularity he had just discovered
in the wall, when a vivid flash of lightning, unusually prolonged,
showed him, obstructing at scarcely a yard's distance his onward path,
the figure he had already distantly beheld from the plain behind.

There was something inexpressibly fearful in his viewless vicinity,
during the next moment of darkness, to this silent, mysterious form, so
imperfectly shown by the lightning that quivered over its half-revealed
proportions. Every pulse in the body of the Goth seemed to pause as he
stood, with ready weapon, looking into the gloomy darkness, and wafting
for the next flash. It came, and displayed to him the man's fierce eyes
glaring steadily down upon his face; another gleam, and he beheld his
haggard finger placed upon his lip in token of silence; a third, and he
saw the arm of the figure pointing towards the plain behind him; and
then in the darkness that followed, a hot breath played upon his ear,
and a voice whispered to him, through a pause in the rolling of the
thunder--'Follow me.'

The next instant Hermanric felt the momentary contact of the man's body,
as with noiseless steps he passed him on the stones. It was no time to
deliberate or to doubt. He followed close upon the stranger's
footsteps, gaining glimpses of his dark form moving onward before,
whenever the lightning briefly illuminated the scene, until they arrived
at a clump of trees, not far distant from the houses in the suburbs that
were occupied by the Goths under his own command.

Here the stranger paused before the trunk of a tree which stood between
the city wall and himself, and drew from beneath his ragged cloak a
small lantern, carefully covered with a piece of cloth, which he now
removed, and holding the light high above his head, regarded the Goth
with a steady and anxious scrutiny.

Hermanric attempted to address him first, but the appearance of the man,
barely visible though it was by the feeble light of his lantern, was so
startling and repulsive, that the half-formed words died away on his
lips. The face of the stranger was of a ghastly paleness; his hollow
cheeks were seamed with deep wrinkles; and his eyes glared with an
expression of ferocious suspicion. One of his arms was covered with old
bandages, stiff with coagulated blood, and hung paralysed at his side.
The hand that held the light trembled, so that the lantern containing it
vibrated continuously in his unsteady grasp. His limbs were lank and
shrivelled almost to deformity, and it was with evident difficulty that
he stood upright on his feet. Every member of his body seemed to be
wasting with a gradual death, while his expression, ardent and
forbidding, was stamped with all the energy of manhood, and all the
daring of youth.

It was Ulpius! The wall was passed! The breach was made good!

After a protracted examination of Hermanric's countenance and attire,
the man, with an imperious expression, strangely at variance with his
faltering voice, thus addressed him:--

'You are a Goth?'

'I am,' rejoined the young chief; 'and you are--'

'A friend of the Goths,' was the quick answer.

An instant of silence followed. The dialogue was then again begun by
the stranger.

'What brought you alone to the base of the ramparts?' he demanded, and
an expression of ungovernable apprehension shot from his eyes as he
spoke.

'I saw the appearance of a man in the gleam of the lightning,' answered
Hermanric. 'I approached it, to assure myself that my eyes had not
deluded me, to discover--'


'There is but one man of your nation who shall discover whence I came
and what I would obtain,' interrupted the stranger fiercely; 'that man
is Alaric, your king.'

Surprise, indignation, and contempt appeared in the features of the
Goth, as he listened to such a declaration from the helpless outcast
before him. The man perceived it, and motioning him to be silent, again
addressed him.

'Listen!' cried he. 'I have that to reveal to the leader of your forces
which will stir the heart of every man in your encampment, if you are
trusted with the secret after your king has heard it from my lips! Do
you still refuse to guide me to his tent?'

Hermanric laughed scornfully.

'Look on me,' pursued the man, bending forward, and fixing his eyes with
savage earnestness upon his listener's face. 'I am alone, old, wounded,
weak,--a stranger to your nation,--a famished and a helpless man!
Should I venture into your camp--should I risk being slain for a Roman
by your comrades--should I dare the wrath of your imperious ruler
without a cause?'

He paused; and then, still keeping his eyes on the Goth, continued in
lower and more agitated tones--

'Deny me your help, I will wander through your camp till I find your
king? Imprison me, your violence will not open my lips! Slay me, you
will gain nothing by my death! But aid me, and to the latest moment of
your life you will rejoice in the deed! I have words of terrible import
for Alaric's ear,--a secret in the gaining of which I have paid the
penalty thus!'

He pointed to his wounded arm. The solemnity of his voice, the rough
energy of his words, the stern determination of his aspect, the darkness
of the night that was round them, the rolling thunder that seemed to
join itself to their discourse, the impressive mystery of their meeting
under the city walls, all began to exert their powerful and different
influences over the mind of the Goth, changing insensibly the sentiments
at first inspired in him by the man's communications. He hesitated, and
looked round doubtfully towards the lines of the camp.

There was a long silence, which was again interrupted by the stranger.

'Guard me, chain me, mock at me if you will,' he cried, with raised
voice and flashing eyes, 'but lead me to Alaric's tent! I swear to you
by the thunder pealing over our heads, that the words I would speak to
him will be more precious in his eyes than the brightest jewel he could
ravish from the coffers of Rome.'

Though visibly troubled and impressed, Hermanric still hesitated.

'Do you yet delay?' exclaimed the man, with contemptuous impatience.
'Stand back! I will pass on by myself into the very heart of your camp!
I entered on my project alone--I will work its fulfilment without help!
Stand back!'

And he moved past Hermanric in the direction of the suburbs, with the
same look of fierce energy on his withered features which had marked
them so strikingly at the outset of his extraordinary interview with the
young chieftain.


The daring devotion to his purpose, the reckless toiling after a
dangerous and doubtful success, manifested in the words and actions of
one so feeble and unaided as the stranger, aroused in the Goth that
sentiment of irrepressible admiration which the union of moral and
physical courage inevitably awakens. In addition to the incentive to
aid the man thus created, an ardent curiosity to discover his secret
filled the mind of Hermanric, and further powerfully inclined him to
conduct his determined companion into Alaric's presence--for by such
proceeding only could he hope, after the man's firm declaration that he
would communicate in the first instance to no one but the king, to
penetrate ultimately the object of his mysterious errand. Animated,
therefore, by such motives as these, he called to the stranger to stop,
and briefly communicated to him his willingness to conduct him instantly
to the presence of the leader of the Goths.

The man intimated by a sign his readiness to accept the offer. His
physical powers were now evidently fast failing, but he still tottered
painfully onward as they moved to the headquarters of the camp,
muttering and gesticulating to himself almost incessantly. Once only
did he address his conductor during their progress; and then with a
startling abruptness of manner, and in tones of vehement anxiety and
suspicion, he demanded of the young Goth if he had ever examined the
surface of the city wall before that night. Hermanric replied in the
negative; and they then proceeded in perfect silence.

Their way lay through the line of encampment to the westward, and was
imperfectly lighted by the flame of an occasional torch or the glow of a
distant watch-fire. The thunder had diminished in frequency, but had
increased in volume; faint breaths of wind soared up fitfully from the
west, and already a few raindrops fell slowly to the thirsty earth. The
warriors not actually on duty at the different posts of observation had
retired to the shelter of their tents; none of the thousand idlers and
attendants attached to the great army appeared at their usual haunts;
even the few voices that were audible sounded distant and low. The
night-scene here, among the ranks of the invaders of Italy, was as
gloomy and repelling as on the solitary plains before the walls of Rome.

Ere long the stranger perceived that they had reached a part of the camp
more thickly peopled, more carefully illuminated, more strongly
fortified, than that through which they had already passed; and the
liquid, rushing sound of the waters of the rapid Tiber now caught his
suspicious and attentive ear. They still moved onward a few yards; and
then paused suddenly before a tent, immediately surrounded by many
others, and occupied at all its approaches by groups of richly-armed
warriors. Here Hermanric stopped an instant to parley with the sentinel,
who, after a short delay, raised the outer covering of the entrance to
the tent, and the moment after the Roman adventurer beheld himself
standing by his conductor's side in the presence of the Gothic king.

The interior of Alaric's tent was lined with skins, and illuminated by
one small lamp, fastened to the centre pole that supported its roof.
The only articles of furniture in the place were some bundles of furs
flung down loosely on the ground, and a large, rudely-carved wooden
chest, on which stood a polished human skull, hollowed into a sort of
clumsy wine-cup. A thoroughly Gothic ruggedness of aspect, a stately
Northern simplicity prevailed over the spacious tent, and was indicated
not merely in its thick shadows, its calm lights, and its freedom from
pomp and glitter, but even in the appearance and employment of its
remarkable occupant.