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\/ 
 
ANTONINA 
 
 THE TALL OF ROME. 
 
ANTONINA; 
 
 THE FALL OF ROME 
 
 a Komsiue at t1)c JFtfti) Cmturg. 
 
 By W. WILKIE COLLINS, 
 
 AUTHOB OF THK "LIFE OF WILLIAM COLLINS, H.A." 
 
 " La vUle cesse d'etre : 
 Le Romain est esclave, et le Goth est son maitre." 
 
 Sct'DKRi, " Alariqiie. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 RICHARD BEXTLEY, 
 
 NEW BURLINGTON STREET. 
 
 MDCCCL. 
 
LONDON: 
 iDBURT ANi> EVANS, rSIMEKS, 
 
 iSTEyBJAE*. 
 
^ 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 4 
 
 
 LADY CHANTREY 
 
 THE FOLLOWDs^G PAGES 
 
 ARE DEDICATED, 
 
 AS A SLIGHT BUT SINCERE TESTIMONY OF ESTEEM AND REGARD, 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 
 a> 
 
 ?; 
 
 f EBKUART, 1850. 
 
 ^ 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The remarkable historical events which have 
 been chosen, to originate the following story, 
 are amply and brilliantly detailed in the 
 "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." 
 The origin and progress of the Gothic in- 
 vasion of Italy under Alaric ; those social 
 and pohtical convulsions within the Empire, 
 which concurred with the attacks from with- 
 out in ultimately producing the memorable 
 overthrow of the whole Roman power ; those 
 occurrences attending the first barbarian siege 
 of the Imperial City, wiiich the present 
 Romance is intended to reproduce, and which 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 essentially mark the commencing epoch of 
 the "Fall of Rome;'' will all be found by 
 the reader who may not be previously ac- 
 quainted with the subject, in the pages ot 
 the great history already mentioned. 
 
 Whenever it has been thought probable 
 that some desire might be felt to test the 
 historical accuracy of particular passages, the 
 proper notes have been inserted at the foot of 
 the page, where little more than a reference 
 to chapter and book was requisite ; but where 
 some extent of quotation appeared neces- 
 sary, the reader is referred to the Appendix 
 at the end of each Volume. 
 
 Believing that the work of Gibbon would 
 be more easily attainable to all classes of 
 readers than any of the other ancient and 
 modern authorities which he had consulted 
 the Author has taken care to refer, on all 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 possible occasions, to the " Decline and Fall 
 of the Roman Empire," except in cases where 
 the introduction of minute historical par- 
 ticulars, which importantly influenced the 
 story, seemed to require the production of 
 the various historical sources (mostly ancient) 
 from which they had been drawn. 
 
 It will be observed, that the only two his- 
 torical personages introduced in the following 
 pages, (the Emperor Honorius and Alaric,) 
 appear as characters of secondary importance, 
 as regards the conduct of the story. Upon 
 consideration of the principle on which he 
 should write, the Author doubted the pro- 
 priety (in his case, at least,) of selecting 
 heroes and heroines from the real personages 
 of the period. He feared, on this plan, that 
 while he was necessarily adding from inven- 
 tion to what was actually known, his fiction 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 might be placed in unfavourable contrast with 
 truth, and that he might be unable to carry 
 out his story, written upon such a system, 
 without confusing or falsifying dates ; thus 
 failing in one main object of his anxiety, 
 viz., to make his plot invariably arise, and 
 proceed out of, the great historical events of 
 the era, exactly in the order in which they 
 occurred. 
 
 Under these circumstances, he thought 
 that by forming all his principal characters 
 from imagination, he should be able to mould 
 them as he pleased to the main necessities 
 of the story; to display them, without any 
 impropriety, as influenced in whatever manner 
 appeared most strikingly interesting by its 
 minor incidents ; and, further, to make them 
 on all occasions, without trammel or hind- 
 rance, the practical exponents of the spirit 
 
PREFACE. XI 
 
 of the age, of all the various historical illus- 
 trations of the period which the Author's 
 researches among conflicting but equally 
 important authorities, had enabled him to 
 garner up. While, at the same time, the 
 appearance of verisimilitude necessary to an 
 historical romance might, he imagined, be 
 successfully preserved by the occasional intro- 
 duction of the living characters of the period, 
 in those portions of the plot comprising 
 events with which they had been remarkably 
 connected. 
 
 Some discrepancy in the length of the 
 different chapters of the romance may also be 
 noticed. One chapter may be considered 
 as extended unnecessarily to fifty or sixty 
 pages, while another is arbitrarily shortened 
 to twenty or thirty. This is, however, 
 not the result of accident or carelessness. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Knowing that his work must be arranged in 
 divisions, the author thought it best to let the 
 plot divide itself; to end each chapter only 
 when a pause naturally occurred in the events 
 that it related ; and each Book and Volume, 
 only when each portion of the story reached its 
 grand climax, in preference to preserving 
 arithmetical symmetry by giving to every 
 division of the narrative an equal number of 
 pages. By this plan, it was thought that the 
 different passages in the story might be most 
 forcibly contrasted one with another, that each 
 scene, while it preserved its separate interest 
 to the mind of the reader, might most clearly 
 appear to be combining to form one complete 
 whole ; that, in the painter's phrase, the 
 " effects '' might thus be best " massed," and 
 the " lights and shadows " most harmoniously 
 "balanced" and "discriminated." 
 
PREFACE. Xm 
 
 The author hopes that his motives in 
 making these explanations will not be mis- 
 understood. They are not obtruded on the 
 reader from any desire to present them as 
 worthy of attention in themselves, but solely 
 as tending to prove that he did not enter on 
 his undertaking, such as it was, without some 
 thought, some plan of arrangement by which 
 he should proceed. He is well aware that he 
 has ventured greatly in appearing before the 
 pubhc as the writer of a romance, at a period 
 when so much that is admirable in fiction is 
 already addressed to them, and he is anxious 
 for this very reason to be permitted to explain 
 — whatever the reception which may be 
 accorded to his book — that he did not begin 
 to write it without careful consideration of the 
 task he was imposing on himself, or without 
 forming a system to work on, which whether 
 
XIV PREFACE. 
 
 good or bad, was at any rate the best that his 
 ingenuity could invent. 
 
 There are other matters connected with 
 many passages in the present work, which 
 might be referred to in these pages of intro- 
 duction, but to notice them now would, it is 
 feared, be to make too large a demand upon 
 the reader's patience. If the book cannot of 
 itself appeal to some of his sympathies, it 
 is useless to attempt to awaken them here 
 : — if it can, it is most fit and most desirable 
 that it should be left to speak on its own 
 merits. 
 
 London, 
 Fchruary 21, 1850. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 BOOK FIRST. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. GOISVINTHA 3 
 
 II. THE COURT 41 
 
 BOOK SECOND. 
 
 I. ROME 91 
 
 II. THE CHURCH 122 
 
 III. ANTONINA 162 
 
 IV. AN APPRENTICESHIl' TO THE TEIMPLE . . . . 1S4 
 
 V. THE BEDCHAMBER 245 
 
 APPENDIX 290 
 
BOOK FIRST. 
 
 "O DEI, VENGANO!" 
 
 Metastasio. 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
ANTONINA; 
 
 THE FALL OF ROME. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 GOISVINTHA. 
 The mountains forming the range of Alps which 
 border on the north-eastern confines of Italy, 
 were, in the autumn of the year 408, already fur- 
 rowed in numerous directions by the tracks of the 
 invading forces of those northern nations generally 
 comprised under the appellation of Goths. In 
 some places, these tracks were denoted on either 
 side by fallen trees, and occasionally assumed, 
 when half obliterated by the ravages of storms, 
 the appearance of desolate and irregular marshes. 
 In other places, they were less palpable. Here, 
 the temporary path was entirely hidden by the 
 
 b2 
 
4 ANTONINA. 
 
 incursions of a swollen torrent ; there, it was 
 faintly perceptible in occasional patches of soft 
 ground, or partly traceable by fragments of aban- 
 doned armour, skeletons of horses and men, and 
 remnants of the rude bridges which had once 
 served for passage across a river, or transit over a 
 precipice. 
 
 Among the rocks of the topmost of the range of 
 mountains immediately overhanging the plains of 
 Italy, and presenting the last barrier to the exer- 
 tions of a traveller, or the march of an invader, 
 there lay, at the beginning of the fifth century, a 
 little lake. Bounded on three sides by precipices, 
 its narrow banks barren alike of verdure or habi- 
 tations, and its dark, stagnant waters, brightened 
 but rarely by the presence of the lively sunlight ; 
 this solitary spot — at all times mournful — pre- 
 sented, on the autumn day w^hen our story com- 
 mences, an aspect of desolation at once dismal to 
 the eye and oppressive to the heart. 
 
 It was near noon ; but no sun appeared in the 
 heaven. The dull clouds, monotonous in colour 
 and form, hid all beauty in the firmament, and 
 
ANTONINA. 5 
 
 shed heavy darkness on the earth. Dense, stag- 
 nant vapours clung to the mountain summits ; 
 from the drooping trees dead leaves and rotten 
 branches sunk, at intervals, on the oozy soil, or 
 whirled over the gloomy precipice ; and a small, 
 steady rain fell, slow and unintermitting, upon the 
 deserts around. Standing upon the path which 
 armies had once trodden, and which armies were 
 still destined to tread, and looking towards the 
 solitary lake, you heard, at first, no sound but the 
 regular dripping of the rain-drops from rock to 
 rock ; you saw no prospect but the motionless 
 waters at your feet, and the dusky crags which 
 shadowed them from above. When, however, 
 impressed by the mysterious loneliness of the 
 place, the eye grew more penetrating, and the ear 
 more attentive, a cavern became apparent in the 
 precipices round the lake ; and, in the intervals of 
 the heavy rain-drops, were faintly perceptible the 
 sounds of a human voice. 
 
 The mouth of the cavern was partly concealed 
 by a large stone, on which were piled some masses 
 of rotten brushwood, as if for the purpose of pro- 
 
ANTONINA. 
 
 tecting any inhabitant it might contain from the 
 coldness of the atmosphere without. Placed at 
 the eastward boundary of the lake, this strange 
 place of refuge commanded a view, not only of 
 the rugged path immediately below it, but of 
 a large plot of level ground at a short distance 
 to the west, which overhung a second and lower 
 range of rocks. From this spot might be seen 
 far beneath, on days when the atmosphere was 
 clear, the olive grounds that clothed the moun- 
 tain's base ; and^ beyond, stretching away to the 
 distant horizon, the plains of fated Italy, whose 
 destiny of defeat and shame was now hastening 
 to its dark and fearful accomplishment. 
 
 The cavern, within, was low and irregular in 
 form. From its rugged walls, the damp oozed 
 forth upon its floor of decayed moss. Lizards 
 and noisome animals had tenanted its comfortless 
 recesses undisturbed, until the period we have 
 just described, when their miserable rights 
 were infringed on for the first time by human 
 intruders. 
 
 A woman crouched near the entrance of the 
 
ANTONINA. 7 
 
 place. More within, on the driest part of the 
 ground, lay a child asleep. Between them were 
 scattered some withered branches and decayed 
 leaves, which were arranged as if to form a fii-e. 
 In many parts this scanty collection of fuel was 
 shghtly blackened ; but, wetted as it was by the 
 rain, all efforts to light it permanently had evi- 
 dently been fruitless. 
 
 The woman's head was bent forwards, and her 
 face, hid in her hands, rested on her knees. At 
 intervals she muttered to herself, in a hoarse, 
 moaning voice. A portion of her scanty clothing 
 had been removed to cover the child. What 
 remained on her was composed, partly of skins of 
 animals, partly of coarse cotton cloth. In many 
 places this miserable dress was marked with blood, 
 and her long, flaxen hair bore upon its dishevelled 
 locks the same ominous and repulsive stain. 
 
 The child seemed scarcely four years of age, and 
 showed on his pale, thin face all the peculiarities 
 of his Gothic origin. His features seemed to 
 have been once beautiful, both in expression and 
 form ; but a deep wound, extending the whole 
 
ANTONINA. 
 
 length of his cheek, had now deformed him for 
 ever. He shivered and trembled in his sleep, and 
 every now and then mechanically stretched forth 
 his little arms towards the dead, cold branches that 
 were scattered before him. Suddenly a large stone 
 became detached from the rock in a distant part 
 of the cavern, and fell noisily to the ground. At 
 this sound he woke with a scream — raised himself 
 — endeavoured to advance towards the woman, 
 and staggered backward against the side of the 
 cave. A second wound in the leg had wreaked 
 that destruction on his vigour, which the first had 
 effected on his beauty. He was a cripple. 
 
 At the instant of his awakening the woman had 
 started up. She now raised him from the ground, 
 and taking some herbs from her bosom applied 
 them to his wounded cheek. By this action her 
 dress became discomposed : it was stiff at the top 
 with coagulated blood, which had evidently flowed 
 from a cut in her neck. All her attempts to com- 
 pose the child were in vain ; he moaned and wept 
 piteously, muttering, at intervals, his disjointed 
 exclamations of impatience at the coldness of the 
 
AXTONINA. 
 
 place and the agony of his recent wounds. Speech- 
 less and tearless the wretched woman looked 
 vacantly down on his face. There was little dif- 
 ficulty in discerning from that fixed, distracted 
 ^aze the nature of the tie that bound the mourn- 
 ing woman to the suffering boy. The expression 
 of rigid and awful despair that lowered in her 
 fixed, gloomy eyes ; the livid paleness that dis- 
 coloured her compressed lips ; the spasms that 
 shook her firm, commanding form, mutely express- 
 ing in the divine eloquence of human emotion, 
 that between the solitary pair there existed the 
 most intimate of earth's relationships — the con- 
 nexion of mother and child. 
 
 For some time no change occurred in the 
 woman's demeanour. At last, as if struck by 
 some sudden suspicion, she rose, and clasping the 
 child in one arm, displaced with the other the 
 brushwood at the entrance of her place of refuge, 
 and cautiously looked forth on all that the mists 
 left visible of the western landscape. After a 
 short survey, she drew back as if re- assured by 
 the unbroken soUtude of the place, and turning 
 
10 ANTONINA. 
 
 towards the lake, looked down upon the black 
 waters at her feet. 
 
 " Night has succeeded to night," she muttered 
 gloomily ; " and has brought no succour to my 
 body, and no hope to my heart ! Mile on mile 
 have I journeyed, and danger is still behind, and 
 loneliness for ever before. The shadow of death 
 deepens over the boy ; the burden of anguish 
 grows weightier than I can bear. For me^ friends 
 are murdered, defenders are distant, possessions 
 are lost. The God of the Christian priests has 
 abandoned us to danger, and deserted us in woe. 
 It is for me to end the struggle for us both. Our 
 last refuge has been in this place — our sepulchre 
 shall be here as well ! " 
 
 With one last look at the cold and comfortless 
 sky, she advanced to the very edge of the lake's pre- 
 cipitous bank. Already the child was raised in her 
 arms, and her body bent to accomplish successfully 
 the fatal spring, when a sound in the east — faint, 
 distant and fugitive, — caught her ear. In an instant 
 her eye brightened, her chest heaved, her cheek 
 flushed. She exerted the last relics of her wasted 
 
ANTONINA. 11 
 
 strength to gain a prominent position upon a ledge 
 of the rocks behind her, and waited in an agony of 
 expectation for a repetition of that magic sound. 
 
 Ere long she heard it again — for the child, 
 stupefied with terror at the action that had 
 accompanied her determination to plunge with 
 him into the lake, now kept silence, and she could 
 listen undisturbed. To unpractised ears, the 
 sound that so entranced her would have been 
 scarcely audible. Even the experienced traveller 
 would have thought it nothing more than the echo 
 of a falling stone among the rocks in the eastward 
 distance. But to her it was no unimportant 
 sound, for it gave the welcome signal of deliverance 
 and delight. 
 
 As the hour wore on, it came nearer and 
 nearer, tossed about by the sportive echoes, and 
 now clearly betraying that its origin was, as she 
 had at first divined, the note of the Gothic 
 trumpet. Soon the distant music ceased, and was 
 succeeded by another sound low and rumbling, as 
 of an earthquake afar off, or a rising thunder- 
 storm, and changing, ere long, to a harsh confused 
 
12 ANTONINA. 
 
 noise, like the rustling of a mighty wind through 
 whole forests of brushwood. At this instant the 
 woman lost all command over herself; her former 
 patience and caution deserted her ; reckless of 
 danger, she placed the child upon the ledge on 
 which she had been standing ; and, though 
 trembling in every limb, succeeded in mounting 
 so much higher on the crag as to gain a fissure 
 near the top of the rock, which commanded an 
 uninterrupted view of the vast tracts of uneven 
 ground, leading in an easterly direction to the 
 next range of precipices and ravines. 
 
 One after another, the long minutes glided on ; 
 and, though much was still audible, nothing was 
 yet to be seen. At length, the shrill sound of 
 the trumpet again rang through the dull misty 
 air ; and the next instant the advanced guard 
 of an army of Goths emerged from the distant 
 woods. 
 
 Then, after an interval, the multitudes of the 
 main body thronged through every outlet in the 
 trees, and spread in dusky masses over the desert 
 ground that lay between the woods and the rocks 
 
ANTONINA. 13 
 
 about the borders of the lake. The front ranks 
 halted as if to communicate with the crowds of 
 the rear-guard and the stragglers among the 
 baggage waggons, who still poured forth, appa- 
 rently in interminable hosts, from the concealment 
 of the distant trees. The advanced troops, 
 evidently with the intention of examining the 
 roads, still marched rapidly on, until they gained 
 the foot of the ascent leading to the crags to 
 which the woman still clung, and from which, 
 with eager attention, she still watched their 
 movements. 
 
 Placed in a situation of the extremest peril, her 
 strength was her only preservative against the 
 danger of slipping from her high and narrow 
 elevation. Hitherto, the moral excitement of 
 expectation had given her the physical power 
 necessary to maintain her position ; but, just as 
 the leaders of the guard arrived at the cavern, her 
 over-wrought energies suddenly deserted her ; her 
 hands relaxed their grasp ; she tottered, and 
 would have sunk backwards to instant destruction, 
 had not the skins wrapped about her bosom and 
 
14 ANTONINA. 
 
 waist become entangled with a point of one of the 
 jagged rocks immediately around her. Fortunately 
 — for she could utter no cry — the troops halted at 
 this instant to enable their horses to gain breath. 
 Two among them at once perceived her position 
 and detected her nation. They mounted the rocks ; 
 and, while one possessed himself of the child, the 
 other succeeded in rescuing the mother and 
 bearing her safely to the ground. 
 
 The snorting of horses, the clashing of weapons, 
 the confusion of loud, rough voices, which now 
 startled the native silence of the solitary lake, and 
 which would have bewildered and overwhelmed 
 most persons in the woman's exhausted condition, 
 seemed, on the contrary, to re-assure her feelings 
 and re-animate her powers. She disengaged her- 
 self from her preserver''s support ; and taking her 
 child in her arms, advanced towards a man of 
 gigantic stature, whose rich armour sufficiently 
 announced that his position in the army was one 
 of command. 
 
 '• I am Goisvintha" — said she in a firm, calm 
 voice — "sister to Hermanric. I have escaped 
 
ANTONINA. 15 
 
 from the massacre of the hostages in Aquileia 
 with one child. Is my brother with the army of 
 the King!" 
 
 This declaration produced a marked change in 
 the bystanders. The looks of indifference, or 
 curiosity, which they had at first cast on the fugi- 
 tive, changed to the liveliest expressions of wonder 
 and respect. The chieftain whom she had ad- 
 dressed raised the visor of his helmet so as to 
 uncover his face, answered her question in the 
 afi&rmative, and ordered two soldiers to conduct 
 her to the temporary encampment of the main 
 army in the rear. As she turned to depart, an 
 old man advanced, leaning on his long, heavy 
 sword, and accosted her thus : — 
 
 "I am Withimer whose daughter was left 
 hostage with the Romans, in Aquileia. Is she of 
 the slain, or of the escaped ?" 
 
 " Her bones rot under the city walls," was the 
 answer. " The Romans made of her a feast for 
 the dogs." 
 
 No word, or tear, escaped the old warrior. He 
 turned in the direction of Italy ; but, as he looked 
 
16 ANTONINA. 
 
 downwards towards the plains, his brow lowered, 
 and his hands tightened mechanically round the 
 hilt of his enormous weapon. 
 
 The same gloomy question was propounded to 
 Goisvintha by the two men who guided her to the 
 army, that had been asked by their aged comrade. 
 It received the same terrible answer, which was 
 borne with the same stern composure, and followed 
 by the same ominous glance in the direction of 
 Italy, as in the instance of the veteran Withimer. 
 
 Leading the horse that carried the exhausted 
 woman with the utmost care, and yet with won- 
 derful rapidity, down the paths which they had so 
 recently ascended, the men, in a short space of 
 time, reached the place where the army had halted; 
 and displayed to Goisvintha, in all the majesty of 
 numbers and repose, the vast martial assemblage 
 of the warriors of the North. 
 
 No brightness gleamed from their armour ; no 
 banners waved over their heads ; no music sounded 
 among their ranks. Backed by the dreary woods 
 which still disgorged unceasing additions to the 
 warlike multitude already encamped : surrounded 
 
AXTONINA. 17 
 
 by the desolate crags which showed dim, wild, and 
 majestic, through the darkness of the gloomy mist; 
 covered by the dusky clouds which hovered motion- 
 less over the barren mountain-tops^ and poured 
 their stormy waters on the uncultivated plains; all 
 that the appearance of the Goths had of solemnity 
 in itself, was in awful harmony with the cold and 
 mournful aspect that the face of Nature had as- 
 sumed. Silent — menacing — dark, — the army looked 
 the fit embodiment of its leaders tremendous 
 purpose — the subjugation of Rome. 
 
 Conducting Goisvintha quickly through the front 
 files of warriors, her guides, pausing at a spot of 
 ground which shelved upwards at right angles 
 with the main road from the woods, desired her to 
 dismount ; and, pointing to the group that occu- 
 pied the place, said : '' Yonder is Alaric the king; 
 and with him, is Hermanric thy brother." 
 
 At whatever point of view it could have been 
 regarded, the assemblage of persons thus indicated 
 to Goisvintha must have arrested inattention itself. 
 Near a confused mass of weapons, scattered on the 
 ground, reclined a group of warriors apparently 
 
18 ANTONINA. 
 
 listening to the low, muttered conversation of three 
 men of great age, who rose above them, seated on 
 pieces of rock, and whose long, white hair, rough 
 skin dresses, and lean tottering forms, appeared in 
 strong contrast with the iron-clad and gigantic 
 figures of their auditors beneath. Above the old 
 men, on the high road, was one of Alaric's wag- 
 gons ; and on the heaps of baggage piled against 
 its clumsy wheels, had been chosen the resting- 
 place of the future conqueror of Rome. The top 
 of the vehicle seemed absolutely teeming with a 
 living burden. Perched in every available nook and 
 corner, were women and children of all ages, and 
 weapons and live stock of all varieties. Now, a child 
 — lively, mischievous, inquisitive — peered forth over 
 the head of a battering ram. Now, a lean, hungry 
 sheep, advanced his inquiring nostrils sadly to the 
 open air; and displayed by the movement, the head 
 of a withered old woman, pillowed on his woolly 
 flanks. Here, appeared a young girl, struggling 
 half entombed in shields. There, gasped an ema- 
 ciated camp-follower, nearly suffocated in heaps of 
 furs. The whole scene, with its background of 
 
ANTONINA. 19 
 
 great woods, drenched in a vapour of misty rain ; 
 with its striking contrasts at one point and its 
 solemn harmonies at another, presented a vast 
 combination of objects that either startled or awed; 
 — a gloomy conjunction of the menacing and the 
 sublime. 
 
 Bidding Goisvintha wait near the waggon, one 
 of her conductors approached and motioned aside 
 a young man standing near the king. As the 
 warrior rose to obey the demand, he displayed 
 with all the physical advantages of his race an ease 
 and elasticity of movement, unusual among the 
 men of his nation. At the instant when he joined 
 the soldier who had accosted him, his face was 
 partially concealed by an immense helmet, crowned 
 with a boards head, the mouth of which, forced 
 open at death, gaped wide, as if still raging for 
 prey. But the man had scarcely stated his errand, 
 when he startled violently, removed the grim ap- 
 pendage of war, and hastened bare-headed to the 
 side of the waggon where Goisvintha awaited his 
 approach. 
 
 The instant he was beheld by the woman, she 
 
20 ANTONINA. 
 
 hastened to meet him ; placed the wounded child 
 in his arms, and greeted him with these words : — 
 
 " Your brother served in the armies of Rome 
 when our people were at peace with the Empire. 
 Of his household and his possessions this is all 
 that the Romans have left ! " 
 
 She ceased ; and for an instant the brother and 
 sister regarded each other in touching and expres- 
 sive silence. Though, in addition to the general 
 characteristics of country, the countenances of the 
 two, naturally bore the more particular evidences 
 of community of blood, all resemblance between 
 them, at this instant — so wonderful is the power of 
 expression over feature — had utterly vanished. 
 The face and manner of the young man, (he had 
 numbered only twenty years,) expressed a deep 
 sorrow ; manly in its stern tranquillity ; sincere 
 in its perfect innocence of display. As he looked 
 on the child, his blue eyes — bright, piercing, and 
 lively — softened like a woman''s; his lips, hardly 
 hidden by his short beard, closed and quivered ; 
 and his chest heaved under the armour that lay 
 upon its noble proportions. There was in this 
 
ANTON INA. 21 
 
 simple, speechless, tearless melancholy — this ex- 
 quisite consideration of triumphant strength for 
 suffering weakness, something almost sublime ; 
 opposed as it was to the emotions of malignity 
 and despair, that appeared in Goisvintha's features. 
 The ferocity that gleamed from her dilated, glar- 
 ing eyes ; the sinister markings that appeared 
 round her pale and parted lips ; the swelling of 
 the large veins, drawn to their extremest point of 
 tension on her lofty forehead, so distorted her 
 countenance, that the brother and sister, as they 
 stood together, seemed in expression to have 
 changed sexes for the moment. From the warrior, 
 came pity for the sufferer— from the mother, in- 
 dignation for the offence. 
 
 Turning from his melancholy contemplation of 
 the child, and as yet addressing not a word to 
 Goisvintha, Hermanric mounted the waggon, and 
 placing the last of his sister's offspring in the arms 
 of a decrepid old woman, who sat brooding over 
 some bundles of herbs spread out upon her lap, 
 addressed her thus : — 
 
 " These wounds are from the Romans. Revive 
 
22 ANTONINA. 
 
 the child, and you shall be rewarded from the 
 spoils of Rome.*" 
 
 " Ha ! ha ! ha ! "' chuckled the crone ; " Her- 
 manric is an illustrious warrior, and shall be 
 obeyed. Hermanric is great, for his arm can slay ; 
 but Brunechild is greater than he, for her cun- 
 ning can cure ! *" 
 
 As if anxious to verify this boast before the 
 warrior''s eyes, the old woman immediately began 
 the preparation of the necessary dressings from 
 her store of herbs ; but Hermanric waited not to 
 be a witness of her skill. With one final look at 
 the pale exhausted child, he slowly descended 
 from the waggon, and approaching Goisvintha, 
 drew her towards the most sheltered position near 
 the ponderous vehicle, and prepared to listen with 
 the deepest attention to the recital of the scenes 
 of terror and suffering through which she had so 
 recently passed. 
 
 " You," she began, " born while our nation was 
 at peace; transported from the field of war, to 
 those distant provinces where tranquiUity still 
 prevailed ; preserved throughout your childhood 
 
ANTONINA. 23 
 
 from the chances of battle ; advanced to the army 
 in your youth, only when its toils are past, and its 
 triumphs are already at hand — you alone, have 
 escaped the miseries of our people, to partake in 
 the glory of their approaching revenge. 
 
 " Hardly had a year passed since you had been 
 removed from the settlements of the Goths when 
 I wedded Priulf. The race of triflers to whom he 
 was then allied, spite of their Roman haughtiness, 
 deferred to him in their councils, and confessed 
 among their legions that he was brave. I saw 
 myself with joy the wife of a warrior of renown ; 
 I believed, in my pride, that T was destined to be 
 the mother of a race of heroes ; when suddenly 
 there came news to us that the Emperor Theodosius 
 was dead. Then followed anarchy among the 
 people of the soil, and outrages on the liberties of 
 their allies, the Goths. Ere long, the call to arms 
 arose among our nation. Soon our waggons of 
 war were rolled across the frozen Danube; our 
 soldiers quitted the Roman camp ; our husband- 
 men took their weapons from their cottage walls ; 
 we that were women prepared with our children 
 
24 ANTONINA. 
 
 to follow our husbands to the field ; and Alaric, 
 the king, came forth as the leader of our hosts. 
 
 " We marched upon the territories of the 
 Greeks. — But how shall I tell you of the events 
 of those years of war that followed our invasion ; 
 of the glory of our victories ; of the hardships of 
 our defences ; of the miseries of our retreats ; of 
 the hunger that we vanquished ; of the diseases 
 that we endured ; of the shameful peace that was 
 finally ratified, against the wishes of our king ! 
 How shall I tell of all this, when my thoughts are 
 on the massacre from which I have just escaped — 
 when those first evils, though once remembered in 
 anguish, are, even now, forgotten in the superior 
 horrors that ensued ! 
 
 '* The truce was made. Alaric departed with 
 the remnant of his army, and encamped at jEmona, 
 on the confines of that land which he had already 
 invaded, and which he is prepared to conquer, 
 now. Between our king and Stilicho, the general 
 of the Romans, passed many messages, for the 
 leaders disputed on the terms of the peace that 
 should be finally ordained. Meanwhile, as an 
 
ANTOXIXA. ZO 
 
 earnest of the Gothic faith, bands of our warriors, 
 and among them Priulf, were despatched into 
 Italy to be allies once more of the legions of 
 Rome, and with them they took their wives, their 
 children, and their possessions, to be detained as 
 their hostages in the cities throughout the land. 
 
 " I and my children were conducted to Aquileia. 
 In a dwelling within the city we were lodged with 
 our possessions. It was night when I took leave 
 of Priulf, my husband, at the gates. I watched 
 him as he departed with the army, and, when the 
 darkness hid him from my eyes, I re-entered the 
 town ; from which I am the only woman of our 
 nation who has escaped alive." 
 
 As she pronounced these last words, Goisvintha's 
 manner, which had been hitherto calm and col- 
 lected, began to change ; she paused abruptly in 
 her narration, her head sunk upon her breast, her 
 frame quivered as if convulsed with violent agony. 
 When she turned towards Hermanric after an 
 interv^al of silence to continue her recital, the same 
 malignant expression lowered over her countenance 
 that had appeared on it, when she presented to 
 
 VOL. I. c 
 
26 ANTONINA. 
 
 him her wounded child ; her voice became broken, 
 hoarse, and unfeminine ; and pressing closely to 
 the young man's side, she laid her trembling fingers 
 on his arm, as if to bespeak his most undivided 
 attention. 
 
 '^ Time grew on/' she continued, " and still 
 there came no tidings that the peace was finally 
 secured. We, that were hostages, lived separate 
 from the people of the town ; for we felt enmity 
 towards each other even then. In my captivity 
 there was no employment for me, but patience — 
 no pursuit, but hope. Alone with my children, I 
 was wont to look forth over the sea, towards the 
 camp of our King ; but day succeeded to day, and 
 his warriors appeared not on the plains ; nor did 
 Priulf return with the legions to encamp before 
 the gates of the town. So, I mourned in my 
 loneliness; for my heart yearned towards the 
 homes of my people ; I longed once more to 
 look upon my husband's face, and to behold again 
 the ranks of our warriors, and the majesty of 
 their battle array. 
 
 " But, already, when the great day of despair 
 
ANTONINA. 27 
 
 was quickly drawing near, a bitter outrage was 
 preparing for me alone. The men who had hitherto 
 watched us were changed, and of the number of 
 the new guards, was one, who cast on me the eyes 
 of lust. Night after night, he poured his entreaties 
 into my unwilling ear; for, in his vanity and 
 shamelessness, he believed that I, who was Gothic 
 and the wife of a Goth, might be won by him 
 whose parentage was but Roman! Soon, from 
 prayers he rose to threats ; and, one night appear- 
 ing before me with smiles, he cried out — that 
 Stilicho, whose desire was to make peace with the 
 Goths, had suffered, for his devotion to our people, 
 the penalty of death; that a time of ruin was 
 approaching for us all ; and that he alone — whom 
 I despised — could preserve me from the anger of 
 Rome. As he ceased he approached me ; but I, 
 who had been in many battle-fields, felt no dread 
 at the prospect of war ; and I spurned him with 
 laughter from my presence. 
 
 " Then, for a few nights more, my enemy ap- 
 proached me not again. Until, one evening, as I 
 sat on the terrace before the house, with the child 
 
 c2 
 
28 *ANTONINA. 
 
 that you have beheld, a helmet-crest suddenly fell 
 at my feet, and a voice cried to me from the garden 
 beneath — ' Priulf thy husband has been slain in a 
 quarrel by the soldiers of Rome! Already the 
 legions with whom he served are on their way to 
 the town ; for a massacre of the hostages is 
 ordained. Speak but the word, and I can save 
 thee, even yet f 
 
 " I looked on the crest. It was bloody, and it 
 was his ! For an instant my heart writhed within 
 me, as I thought on my warrior whom I had 
 loved ! Then, as I heard the messenger of death 
 retire, cursing, from his lurking-place in the 
 garden, I recollected that now my children had 
 none but their mother to defend them ; and that 
 peril was preparing for them from the enemies of 
 their race. Besides the little one in my arms, I 
 had two that were sleeping in the house. As I 
 looked round, bewildered and in despair, to see if 
 a chance were left us to escape, there rang through 
 the evening stillness the sound of a trumpet ; and 
 the tramp of armed men was audible in the street 
 beneath. Then, from all quarters of the town, 
 
ANTONINA.* 29 
 
 rose, as one sudden sound, the shrieks of women 
 and the yells of men. Already, as I rushed to- 
 wards my children's beds, the fiends of Rome had 
 mounted the stairs, and waved in bloody triumph 
 their reeking swords ! I gained the steps, and as 
 I looked up, they flung down at me the body of 
 my youngest child. Oh, Hermanric ! Hermanric ! 
 it was the most beautiful and the most beloved ! 
 What the priests say that God should be to us, • 
 that, the fairest one of my offspring, was to me ! 
 As I saw it mutilated and dead — I, who but an 
 hour before, had hushed it on my bosom to rest ! 
 — my courage forsook me, and when the murder- 
 ers advanced on me, I staggered and fell. I felt 
 the sword-point enter my neck ; I saw the dagger 
 gleam over the child in my arms ; I heard the 
 death-shriek of the last victim above ; and then 
 my senses failed me, and I could listen and move 
 no more ! 
 
 " Long must I have lain motionless at the foot 
 of those fatal stairs ; for when I awoke from my 
 trance, the noises in the city were hushed ; and 
 from her place in the firmament the moon shone 
 
30 ANTONINA. 
 
 softly into the deserted house. I listened, to be 
 certain that I was alone with my murdered chil- 
 dren. No sound was in the dwelling ; the assassins 
 had departed, believing that their labour of blood 
 was ended when I fell beneath their swords ; and 
 I was able to crawl forth in security, and to look 
 my last upon my offspring that the Romans had 
 slain. The child that I held to my breast still 
 breathed. I staunched with some fragments of 
 my garment the wounds that he had received, 
 and laying him gently by the stairs — in the moon- 
 light, so that I might see him when he moved— I 
 groped in the shadow of the wall for my first 
 murdered and my last born : for that youngest 
 and fairest one of my offspring, whom they had 
 slaughtered before my eyes ! When I touched the 
 corpse, it was wet with blood ; I felt its face and 
 it was cold beneath my hands ; I raised its body 
 in my arms, and its limbs already were rigid in 
 death ! Then I thought of the eldest child, who 
 lay dead in the chamber above. But my strength 
 was failing me fast. I had an infant who might 
 yet be preserved ; and I knew that if morning 
 
ANTONINA. 31 
 
 dawned on me in the house, all chances of escape 
 were lost to me for ever. So — though my heart 
 was cold within me, at leaving my child's corpse 
 to the mercy of the Romans — I took up the dead 
 and the wounded one in my arms, and went forth 
 into the garden, and thence towards the seaward 
 quarter of the town. 
 
 *' I passed through the forsaken streets. Some- 
 times I stumbled against the body of a child — 
 sometimes the moonlight showed me the death- 
 pale face of some woman of my nation, whom I 
 had loved, stretched upward to the sky; but I 
 still pressed on until I gained the wall of the 
 town, and heard on the other side the waves 
 breaking softly upon the level surface of the 
 beach. 
 
 "I looked around. The gates I knew were 
 guarded and closed. By the wall was the only 
 prospect of escape ; but its top was high and its 
 sides were smooth, when I felt them with my 
 hands. Despairing and wearied, I laid my 
 burdens down where they were hidden by the 
 shade, and walked onward a few paces, for to 
 
33 ANTONINA. 
 
 remain still was a torment that I could not endure. 
 At a short distance, I saw a soldier sleeping 
 against the wall of a house. By his side was a 
 ladder placed against the window. As I looked 
 up, I beheld the head of a corpse resting on its 
 top. The victim must have been lately slain, for 
 her blood still dripped slowly down into an empty 
 wine-pot that stood within the soldier^s reach. 
 When I saw the ladder hope revived within me. I 
 removed it to the wall — I mounted and laid my dead 
 child on the great stones at its top — I returned, 
 and placed my wounded boy by the corpse. 
 Slowly and with many efforts, I dragged the ladder 
 upwards, until from its own weight one end fell 
 to the ground on the other side. As I had arisen 
 so I descended. In the sand of the beach I 
 scraped a hole, and buried there the corpse of the 
 infant ; for I could carry the weight of two no 
 longer. Then with my wounded child I reached 
 some caverns that lay onward by the shore. There 
 throughout the next day I lay hidden— alone with 
 my sufferings of body, and my affliction of heart 
 — until the night came on, when I set forth on my 
 
ANTONINA. . 33 
 
 journey to the mountains ; for I knew that at 
 ^mona, in the camp of the warriors of my people, 
 lay the only refuge that was left to me on earth. 
 Feebly and slowly, hiding by day and travelling 
 by night, I kept on my way until I gained that 
 lake among the rocks, where the guards of 
 the army came forward and rescued me from 
 death/' 
 
 She ceased. Throughout the latter portion of 
 her recital, her demeanour had been calm and 
 sad, and as she dwelt, with the painful industry 
 of grief, over each minute circumstance connected 
 with the bereavements she had sustained, her voice 
 softened to those accents of quiet mournfulness, 
 which make impressive the most simple words, 
 and render musical the most unsteady tones. It 
 seemed as if those tenderer and kinder emotions, 
 which the attractions of her offspring had once 
 generated in her character, had at the bidding of 
 memory become revivified in her manner, while 
 she lingered over the recital of their deaths. For 
 a brief space of time she looked fixedly and, 
 anxiously upon the countenance of Hormanric 
 
 C o 
 
34 ANTONINA. 
 
 which was half averted from her, and expressed a 
 fierce and revengeful gloom that sat unnaturally 
 on its noble lineaments. Then turning from him, 
 she buried her face in her hands, and made no 
 effort more to attract him to attention, or incite 
 him to reply. 
 
 This solemn silence kept by the bereaved woman 
 and the brooding man had lasted but a few 
 minutes, when a harsh trembling voice, was heard 
 from the top of the waggon, calling at intervals — 
 " Hermanric ! Hermanric ! " 
 
 At first the young man remained unmoved by 
 those discordant and repulsive tones. They 
 repeated his name, however, so often and so per- 
 severingly, that he noticed them ere long ; and 
 suddenly, rising as if impatient of the interruption, 
 advanced towards the side of the waggon from 
 'which the mysterious summons appeared to come. 
 
 As he looked up towards the vehicle the voice 
 ceased ; and he saw that the old woman to whom 
 he had confided the child, was the person who had 
 called him so hurriedly but a few moments before. 
 Her tottering body, clothed in bear skins, was 
 
ANTONINA. 35 
 
 bent forward over a large triangular shield of 
 polished brass, on which she leant her lank 
 shrivelled arms. Her head shook with a tremulous 
 palsied action — a leer, half smile, half grimace, 
 distended her withered lips, and lightened her 
 sunken eyes. Sinister, cringing, repulsive; her 
 face, livid with the reflection from the weapon that 
 was her support, and her figure, scarcely human 
 in the rugged garments that encompassed its 
 gaunt proportions, she seemed a deformity set up 
 by evil spirits to mock the majesty of the human 
 form — an embodied satire on all that is most 
 deplorable in infirmity, and most disgusting in 
 age. 
 
 The instant she discerned Hermanric, she 
 stretched her body out still further over the 
 shield ; and pointing to the interior of the waggon, 
 muttered softly that one fearful and expressive 
 word — dead ! 
 
 Without waiting for any further explanation, 
 the young Goth mounted the vehicle, and gaining 
 the old woman's side, saw stretched on her collection 
 of herbs — beautiful in the sublime and melancholy 
 
36 ANTONINA. 
 
 stillness of death — the corpse of Goisvintha's last 
 child. 
 
 *' Is Hermanric wrath V whined the hag, quail- 
 ing before the steady rebuking glance of the young 
 man. '' When I said that Brunechild was greater 
 than Hermanric, I lied. It is Hermanric that is 
 most powerful ! See, the dressings were placed on 
 the wounds ; and, though the child has died, shall 
 not the treasures that were promised me be mine I 
 I have done what I could, but my cunning begins 
 to desert me, for I am old— old — old ! I have 
 seen my generation pass away ! Aha ! I am old, 
 Hermanric, I am old ! " 
 
 When the young warrior looked on the child, he 
 saw that the hag had spoken truth, and that the 
 victim had died from no fault of hers. Pale and 
 serene, the countenance of the boy showed how 
 tranquil had been his death. The dressings had 
 been skilfully composed and carefully applied to 
 his wounds, but suffering and privation had anni- 
 hilated the feebleness of human resistance in their 
 march towards the last, dread goal ; and the 
 treachery of Imperial Rome had once more 
 
ANTONINA. 37 
 
 triumphed as was its wont, and triumphed over 
 a child ! 
 
 As Hermanric descended with the corpse, Gois- 
 vintha was the first object that met his eyes when 
 he ahghted on the ground. The mother received 
 from him the lifeless burden without an exclama- 
 tion or a tear. That emanation from her former 
 and kinder self, which had been produced by the 
 closing recital of her sufferings, was henceforth, at 
 the signal of her last child's death, extinguished 
 in her for ever ! 
 
 " His wounds had crippled him," said the young 
 man, gloomily. *' He could never have fought 
 with the warriors ! Our ancestors slew themselves 
 when they were no longer vigorous for the fight. 
 It is better that he has died ! "" 
 
 *' Vengeance ! " gasped Goisvintha, pressing up 
 closely to his side. " We will have vengeance 
 for the massacre of Aquileia ! When blood is 
 streaming in the palaces of Rome, remember my 
 murdered children, and hasten not to sheathe thy 
 sword ! " 
 
 At this instant, as if to rouse still further the 
 
38 ANTONINA. 
 
 fierce determination that appeared already in the 
 face of the young Goth, the voice of Alaric was 
 heard commanding the army to advance. Her- 
 manric started, and drew the panting woman after 
 him to the resting-place of the king. There, 
 armed at all points, and rising, by his superior 
 stature, high above the throng around him, stood 
 the dreaded captain of the Gothic hosts. His 
 helmet was raised so as to display his clear blue 
 eyes gleaming over the multitude around him; he 
 pointed with his sword in the direction of Italy ; 
 and as, rank by rank, the men started to their 
 arms, and prepared exultingly for the march, his 
 lips parted with a smile of triumph, and ere he 
 moved to accompany them he spoke thus : — 
 
 " Warriors of the Goths, our halt is a short 
 one among the mountains ; but, let not the weary 
 repine, for the glorious resting-place that awaits 
 our labours, is the City of Rome ! The curse of 
 Odin, when in the infancy of our nation he retired 
 before the myriads of the Empire, it is our privi- 
 lege to fulfil ! That future destruction, which he 
 denounced against Rome, it is ours to effect ! 
 
ANTONINA. 39 
 
 Remember your hostages, that the Romans have 
 slain; your possessions^ that the Romans have 
 seized ; your trust, that the Romans have betrayed ! 
 Remember, that I, your king, have within me that 
 supernatural impulse which never deceives, and 
 which calls to me in a voice of encouragement — 
 Advance, and the Empire is thine ! Assemble 
 the warriors, and the City of the World shall be 
 delivered to the conquering Goths ! Let us 
 onward without delay ! Our prey awaits us ! 
 Our triumph is near ! Our vengeance is at 
 hand ! " 
 
 He paused ; and at that moment, the trumpet 
 gave signal for the march. 
 
 " Up ! Up ! " cried Hermanric, seizing Goisvintha 
 by the arm, and pointing to the waggon which had 
 already begun to move ; " Make ready for the 
 journey ! I will charge myself with the burial of 
 the child. Yet a few days and our encampment 
 may be before Aquileia. Be patient, and I will 
 avenge thee in the palaces of Rome ! " 
 
 The mighty mass moved. The multitude 
 stretched forth over the barren ground ; and, even 
 
40 ANTONINA. 
 
 now, the warriors in front of the army might be 
 seen by those in the rear mounting the last range 
 of passes that lay between the plains of Italy and 
 the Goths.* 
 
 * The historical events introduced up to this point will be 
 found in the 30th chapter of the "Decline and Fall of the 
 Roman Empire." Alaric's conviction that he was the instrument 
 of a supernatural agency against Rome, is mentioned at the 
 beginning of tlie 31st chapter. In quoting from Gibbon, here 
 and elsewhere, I refer to the edition of 1844, in one volume. 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 THE COURT. 
 The traveller who so far departs from the ordinary 
 track of tourists in modern Italy, as to visit the 
 city of Ravenna, remembers with astonishment, 
 as he treads its silent and melancholy streets, and 
 beholds vineyards and marshes spread over an 
 extent of four miles between the Adriatic and the 
 town, that this place, now half deserted, was once 
 the most populous of Roman fortresses ; and that 
 where fields and woods now present themselves to 
 his eyes, the fleets of the Empire once rode 
 securely at anchor, and the merchant of Rome 
 disembarked his precious cargoes at his warehouse 
 door. 
 
 As the power of Rome declined, the Adriatic by 
 a strange fatality began to desert the fortress, 
 
42 ANTONINA. 
 
 whose defence it had hitherto secured. Coeval 
 with the gradual degeneracy of the people, was the 
 gradual withdrawal of the ocean from the city 
 walls ; until, at the beginning of the sixth century, 
 a grove of pines already appeared where the port 
 of Augustus once existed. 
 
 At the period of our story — though the sea had 
 even then receded perceptibly — the ditches round 
 the walls were yet filled, and the canals still ran 
 through the city, in much the same manner as 
 they intersect Venice at the present time. 
 
 On the morning that we are about to describe, the 
 autumn had advanced some days since the events 
 mentioned in the preceding chapter. Although 
 the sun was now high in the eastern horizon, the 
 restlessness produced by the heat emboldened a 
 few idlers of Ravenna to brave the sultriness of 
 the atmosphere, in the vain hope of being greeted 
 by a breeze from the Adriatic, as they mounted 
 the seaward ramparts of the town. On attaining 
 their destined elevation, these sanguine citizens 
 turned their faces with fruitless and despairing 
 industry towards every point of the compass, but 
 
ANTONINA. 43 
 
 no breath of air came to reward their perseve- 
 rance. Nothing could be more thoroughly sug- 
 gestive of the undiminished universality of the 
 heat, than the view, in every direction, from the 
 position they then occupied. The stone houses of 
 the city behind them glowed with a vivid bright- 
 ness overpowering to the strongest eyes. The 
 light curtains hung motionless over the lonely 
 windows. No shadows varied the brilliant mono- 
 tony of the walls, or softened the lively glitter on 
 the waters of the fountains beneath. Not a ripple 
 stirred the surface of the broad channel, that now 
 replaced the ancient harbour. Not a breath of 
 wind unfolded the scorching sails of the deserted 
 vessels at the quay. Over the marshes in the 
 distance hung a hot, quivering mist ; and in the 
 vineyards, near the town, not a leaf waved 
 upon its slender stem. On the seaward side lay, 
 vast and level, the prospect of the burning sand, 
 and beyond it the main ocean, — waveless, torpid, 
 and suffused in a flood of fierce brightness, — 
 stretched out to the cloudless horizon that closed 
 the sunbright view. 
 
44 ANTONINA. 
 
 Within the town, in those streets where the tall 
 houses cast a deep shadow on the flagstones of the 
 road, the figures of a few slaves might, here and 
 there, be seen sleeping against the walls, or gos- 
 siping languidly on the faults of their respective 
 lords. Sometimes an old beggar might be ob- 
 served, hunting on the well-stocked preserves of 
 his own body the lively vermin of the South. 
 Sometimes a restless child crawled from a door- 
 step to paddle in the stagnant waters of a kennel ; 
 but wdth the exception of these doubtful evidences 
 of human industry, the prevailing characteristic of 
 the few groups of the lowest orders of the people 
 which appeared in the streets was the most listless 
 and utter indolence. All that gave splendour to 
 the city at other hours of the day was at this 
 period hidden from the eye. The elegant cour- 
 tiers reclined in their lofty chambers ; the guards 
 on duty ensconced themselves in angles of walls 
 and recesses of porticos ; the graceful ladies slum- 
 bered on perfumed couches in darkened rooms; 
 the gilded carriages were shut into the coach- 
 houses ; the prancing horses were confined in the 
 
ANTONINA. 45 
 
 stables ; and even the wares in the market places 
 were removed from exposure to the sun. It was 
 clear that the luxurious inhabitants of Ravenna 
 recognised no duties of sufficient importance, and 
 no pleasures of sufficient attraction, to necessitate 
 the exposure of their susceptible bodies to the 
 noontide heat. 
 
 To give the reader some idea of the manner in 
 which the indolent patricians of the Court loitered 
 aw^ay their noon, and to satisfy, at the same time, 
 the exigencies attaching to the conduct of this 
 story, it is requisite to quit the lounging-places of 
 the plebeians in the streets, for the couches of the 
 nobles in the Emperor's palace. 
 
 Passing through the massive entrance gates, 
 crossing the vast hall of the Imperial abode, with 
 its statues, its marbles, and its guards in attend- 
 ance ; and thence, ascending the noble staircase, 
 the first object that might on this occasion have 
 attracted the observer, w^hen he gained the 
 approaches to the private apartments, was a door 
 at an extremity of the corridor, richly carved and 
 standing half open. At this spot were grouped 
 
46 ANTONINA. 
 
 some fifteen or twenty individuals, who conversed 
 by signs, and maintained in all their movements 
 the most decorous and complete silence. Some- 
 timesj one of the party stole on tiptoe to the door, 
 and looked cautiously through, returning almost 
 instantaneously, and expressing to his next neigh- 
 bour, by various grimaces, his immense interest in 
 the sight he had just beheld. Occasionally, there 
 came from this mysterious chamber, sounds re- 
 sembling the cackhng of poultry ; varied, now and 
 then, by a noise like the falling of a shower of 
 small, light substances upon a hard floor. When- 
 ever these sounds were audible, the members of 
 the party outside the door looked round upon 
 each other and smiled — some sarcastically, some 
 triumphantly. A few among these patient expec- 
 tants grasped rolls of vellum in their hands ; the 
 rest held nosegays of rare flowers, or supported 
 in their arms small statues and pictures in mosaic. 
 Of their number, some were painters and poets ; 
 some orators and philosophers ; and some statu- 
 aries and musicians. Among such a motley assem- 
 blage of professions, remarkable in all ages of the 
 
ANTONINA. 47 
 
 world for fostering in their votaries the vice of 
 irritabihty, it may seem strange that so quiet and 
 orderly a behaviour should exist as that just 
 described. But it is to be observed that in 
 attending at the palace, these men of genius made 
 sure at least of outward unanimity among their 
 ranks, by coming equally prepared with one ac- 
 complishment, and equally animated by one hope : 
 — they waited to employ a common agent — 
 flattery ; to attain a common end — gain. 
 
 The chamber thus sacred, even from the intru- 
 sion of intellectual inspiration, although richly or- 
 namented, was of no remarkable extent. At other 
 times the eye might have wandered with delight 
 on the exquisite plants and flowers, scattered pro- 
 fusely over a noble terrace, to which a second door 
 in the apartment conducted ; but, at the present 
 moment, the employment of the occupant of the 
 room was of so extraordinary a nature, that the 
 most attentive observation must have missed all 
 the inferior characteristics of the place, to settle 
 immediately on its inhabitant alone. 
 
 In the midst of a large flock of poultry, which 
 
48 
 
 ANTONINA. 
 
 seemed strangely misplaced on a floor of marble 
 and under a gilded roof, stood a pale, thin, debili- 
 tated youth, magnificently clothed, and holding in 
 his hand a silver vase filled with grain, which he 
 ever and anon distributed to the cackling multi- 
 tude at his feet. Nothing could be more pitiably 
 effeminate than the appearance of this young man. 
 His eyes were heavy and vacant; his forehead low 
 and retiring ; his cheeks sallow ; and his form 
 curved as if with a premature old age. An un- 
 meaning smile dilated his thin, colourless lips ; and 
 as he looked down on his strange favourites, he 
 occasionally whispered to them a few broken ex- 
 pressions of endearment, almost infantine in their 
 simphcity. His whole soul seemed to be engrossed 
 by the labour of distributing his grain, and he fol- 
 lowed the different movements of the poultry with 
 an earnestness of attention, which seemed almost 
 idiotic in its ridiculous intensity. If it be asked, 
 why a person so contemptible as this solitary 
 youth has been introduced with so much care, and 
 described with so much minuteness, it must 
 be answered, that, though destined to form no 
 
ANTONINA. 49 
 
 important figure in this work, he played, from his 
 position, a remarkable part in the great drama on 
 which it is founded — for this feeder of chickens 
 was no less a person than Honorius, Emperor of 
 Rome.* 
 
 It is the very imbecility of this man, at such a 
 time as that we now write on, which invests his 
 character with a fearful interest in the eye of 
 posterity. To his feebleness was accorded the ter- 
 rible responsibility of liberating the long-prisoned 
 storm, whose elements we have attempted to 
 describe in the preceding chapter. With just 
 intellect enough to be capricious, and just deter- 
 mination enough to be mischievous, he was an 
 instrument fitted for the uses of every ambitious 
 villain who could succeed in gaining his ear. To 
 flatter his puerile tyranny, the infatuated intriguers 
 of the court rewarded the heroic Stihcho for the 
 rescue of his country, with the penalty of death, and 
 defrauded Alaric of the moderate concessions that 
 they had solemnly pledged themselves to perform. 
 
 * Vide " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," chap. 29, 
 page 458. 
 
 VOL. I, D 
 
50 
 
 ANTONINA. 
 
 To gratify his vanity, he was paraded in triumph 
 through the streets of Rome, for a victory that 
 others had gained. To pander to his arrogance, 
 by an exhibition of the vilest privilege of that 
 power which had been entrusted to him for good, 
 the massacre of the helpless hostages, confided by- 
 Gothic honour to Roman treachery, was unhesi- 
 tatingly ordained ; and, finally, to soothe the 
 turbulence of his unmanly fears, the last act of his 
 unscrupulous councillors, ere the empire fell, was 
 to authorise his abandoning his people in the hour 
 of peril, careless who suffered in defenceless Rome, 
 while he was secure in fortified Ravenna.* Such 
 was the man under whom the mightiest of the 
 world'*8 structures was doomed to totter to its fall ! 
 Raised and supported by a superhuman daring, 
 that invested the nauseous horrors of incessant 
 bloodshed with a rude and appalling magnificence, 
 the mistress of nations was now fated to sink by 
 the most ignoble of defeats, under the most abject 
 of tremblers. For this had the rough old King- 
 
 * "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," chapters 
 29 and 30. 
 
ANTONINA. 51 
 
 dom shaken off its enemies by swarms from its 
 vigorous arms ! For this had the doubtful virtues 
 of the Repubhc, and the perilous magnificence of 
 the Empire, perplexed and astonished the world ! 
 In such a conclusion as Honorius, ended the digni- 
 fied barbarities of a Brutus, the pohshed splendours 
 of an Augustus, the unearthly atrocities of a Nero, 
 and the immortal virtues of a Trajan ! Vainly, 
 through the toiling ages^ over the ruin of her 
 noblest hearts, and the prostitution of her grandest 
 intellects, had Rome stridden pitilessly onward, 
 grasping at the shadow — Glory ; the fiat had now 
 gone forth, that doomed her to possess herself 
 finally, of the substance — Shame ! 
 
 When the imperial trifler had exhausted his 
 store of grain, and satisfied the cravings of his 
 voracious favourites, he was relieved of his silver 
 vase by two attendants. The flock of poultry was 
 then ushered out at one door, while the flock of 
 geniuses was ushered in at the other. 
 
 Leaving the Emperor to cast his languid eyes 
 over objects of art for which he had no admira- 
 tion, and to open his unwilling ears to panegyrical 
 
 SnvoFiamois 
 
52 ANTONINA. 
 
 orations for which he had no comprehension, we 
 proceed to introduce the reader to an apartment 
 on the opposite side of the palace, in which are 
 congregated all the beauty and elegance of his 
 Court. 
 
 Imagine a room, two hundred feet long and 
 proportionably broad. Its floor is mosaic, wrought 
 into the loveliest patterns. Its sides are decorated 
 with immense pillars of variegated marble, the 
 recesses formed by which are occupied by statues, 
 all arranged in exquisite variety of attitude, so as 
 to appear to be offering to whoever approaches 
 them, the rare flowers which it is the duty of the 
 attendants to place in their hands. The ceihng is 
 painted in fresco, in patterns and colours harmo- 
 nising with those on the mosaic floor. The cornices 
 are of silver, and decorated with mottoes from the 
 amatory poets of the day, the letters of which are 
 formed by precious stones. In the middle of the 
 room is a fountain throwing up streams of per- 
 fumed water, and surrounded by golden aviaries, 
 containing birds of all sizes and nations. Three 
 large windows, placed at the eastern extremity of 
 
ANTONINA. 53 
 
 the apartment, look out upon the Adriatic, but 
 are covered at this hour, from the outside, with 
 silk curtains of a delicate green shade, which cast 
 a soft, luxurious light over every object, but are so 
 thinly woven and so skilfully arranged, that the 
 slightest breath of air which moves without, finds 
 its way immediately to the languid occupants of 
 the court waiting-room. The number of these 
 individuals amounts to about fifty or sixty persons. 
 By far the larger half of the assemblage are 
 women. Their black hair tastefully braided into 
 various forms, and adorned with flowers or pre- 
 cious stones, contrasts elegantly with the brilliant 
 whiteness of the robes, in which they are for the 
 most part clothed. Some of them are occupied in 
 listlessly watching the movements of the birds in 
 the aviaries ; others hold a languid and whispered 
 conversation with such of the courtiers as happen 
 to be placed near them. The men exhibit in their 
 dresses a greater variety of colour, and in their 
 occupations a greater fertility of resource than 
 the women. Their garments, of the lightest rose, 
 violet, or yellow tints, diversify fantastically the 
 
54 ANTONINA. 
 
 monotonous white robes of their gentle companions. 
 Of their employments, the most conspicuous are, 
 playing on the lute, gaming with dice, teasing their 
 lap-dogs, and insulting their parasites. Whatever 
 their occupation, it is performed with little atten- 
 tion, and less enthusiasm. Some recline on their 
 couches with closed eyes, as if the heat made the 
 labour of using their organs of vision too much for 
 them ; others, in the midst of a conversation, sud - 
 denly leave a sentence unfinished, apparently inca- 
 pacitated by lassitude from giving expression to 
 the simplest ideas. Every sight in the apartment 
 that attracts the eye, every sound that gains the 
 ear, expresses a luxurious repose. No brilliant 
 light mars the pervading softness of the atmo- 
 sphere; no violent colour materialises the light, 
 etherial hues of the dresses ; no sudden noises 
 interrupt the fitful and plaintive notes of the lute, 
 jar with the soft twittering of the birds in the 
 aviaries, or drown the still, regular melody of the 
 ladies' voices. All objects, animate and inanimate, 
 are in harmony with each other. It is a scene of 
 spiritualised indolence — a picture of dreamy 
 
ANTONINA. 55 
 
 beatitude, in the inmost sanctuary of unruffled 
 repose. 
 
 Amid this assemblage of beauty and nobility, 
 the members of which were rather to be generally 
 noticed than particularly observed, there was, 
 however, one individual who, both by the solitary 
 occupation he had chosen and his accidental 
 position in the room, was personally remarkable 
 among the listless patricians around him. 
 
 His couch was placed nearer the window than 
 that of any other occupant of the chamber. Some 
 of his indolent neighbours — especially those of the 
 gentler sex — occasionally regarded him with 
 mingled looks of admiration and curiosity ; but 
 no one approached him, or attempted to engage 
 him in conversation. A piece of vellum lay by 
 his side, on which, from time to time, he traced a 
 few words, and then resumed his reclining position, 
 apparently absorbed in reflexion and utterly 
 regardless of all the occupants — male and female 
 — of the imperial apartment. Judging from his 
 general appearance, he could scarcely be twenty- 
 five years of age. The conformation of the upper 
 
56 ANTONINA. 
 
 part of his face was thoroughly intellectual — the 
 forehead high, broad, and upright ; the eyes clear, 
 penetrating, and thoughtful — but the lower part 
 was, on the other hand, undeniably sensual. The 
 lips full and thick, formed a disagreeable contrast 
 to the delicate chiselling of the straight Grecian 
 nose; while the fleshiness of the chin, and the 
 jovial redundancy of the cheeks, were, in their 
 turn, utterly at variance with the character of the 
 pale noble forehead, and the expression of the 
 quick intelligent eyes. In stature, he was barely 
 of the middle size ; but every part of his body 
 was so perfectly proportioned, that he appeared, 
 in any position, taller than he really was. The 
 upper part of his dress, thrown open from the 
 heat, partly disclosed the fine statuesque formation 
 of his neck and chest. His ears, hands, and feet, 
 were of that smallness and delicacy which is held 
 to denote the aristocracy of birth; and there 
 was in his manner, that indescribable combi- 
 nation of unobtrusive dignity and unaffected 
 elegance, which in all ages and countries, and 
 through all changes of manners and customs, has 
 
Ax\TONINA. 57 
 
 rendered the demeanour of its few favoured pos- 
 sessors, the instantaneous interpreter of their social 
 rank. 
 
 While the patrician was still occupied over his 
 vellum, the following conversation took place in 
 whispers, between two ladies placed near the 
 situation he occupied. 
 
 " Tell me, Camilla," said the eldest and state- 
 liest of the two, " who is the courtier so occupied 
 in composition ? I have endeavoured, I know not 
 how often, to catch his eye ; but the man will look 
 at nothing but his roll of vellum, or the corners of 
 the room."" 
 
 '' What, are you so great a stranger in Italy as 
 not to know him ! " repUed the other, a lively girl 
 of small delicate form, who fidgeted with perse- 
 vering restlessness on her couch, and seemed 
 incapable of giving an instant's steady attention 
 to any of the objects around her. "By all the 
 saints, martyrs, and relics of my uncle, the 
 bishop!"— 
 
 " Hush ! You should not swear ! " 
 
 **Not swear! Why I am making a new col- 
 
 o3 
 
58 ANTONINA. 
 
 lection of oaths, intended solely for ladies'* 
 use ! I intend to set the fashion of swearing by 
 them myself ! "" 
 
 " But answer my question, I beseech you ! Will 
 you never learn to talk on one subject at a 
 time?'' 
 
 " Your question — ah, your question ! — It was 
 about the Goths?" 
 
 " No, no ! It was about that man who is inces- 
 santly writing, and will look at nobody. He is 
 almost as provoking as Camilla herself ! " 
 
 " Don't frown so ! That man, as you call him, 
 is the senator Vetranio." 
 
 The lady started. It was evident that Vetranio 
 had a reputation. 
 
 " Yes !" continued the lively Camilla. " That 
 is the accomplished Vetranio, but he will be no 
 favourite of yours, for he sometimes swears — 
 swears by the ancient gods too, which is for- 
 bidden!" 
 
 " He is handsome." 
 
 " Handsome ! he is beautiful ! Not a woman 
 in Italy but is lauguishing for him ! " 
 
ANTONINA. 59 
 
 " I have heard that he is clever/' 
 
 " Who has not ? He is the author of some of 
 the most celebrated sauces of the age. Cooks of 
 all nations worship him as an oracle. Then he 
 writes poetry, and composes music, and paints 
 pictures! And, as for philosophy — he talks it 
 better than my uncle the bishop ! " 
 
 " Is he rich ? " 
 
 " Ah ! my uncle the bishop ! — I must tell you 
 how I helped Vetranio to make a satire on him ! 
 When I was staying with him at Kome, I used 
 often to see a woman in a veil taken across the 
 garden to his study ; so, to perplex him, I asked 
 him who she w^as. And he frowned and stammered, 
 and said, at first, that I was disrespectful ; but he 
 told me, afterwards, that she was an Arian whom 
 he was labouring to convert. So I thought I 
 should like to see how this conversion went on, 
 and I hid myself behind a bookcase. But it is a 
 profound secret ; I tell it you in confidence.'' 
 
 " I don't care to know it. Tell me about 
 Vetranio." 
 
 " How ill-natured you are ! Oh, I shall never 
 
60 ANTONINA. 
 
 forget how we laughed, when I told Vetranio what 
 I had seen ! He took up his writing-materials, 
 and made the satire immediately . The next day 
 all Rome heard of it. My uncle was speechless 
 with rage ! I believe he suspected me ; but he 
 gave up converting the Arian lady ; and — " 
 
 " I ask you again — is Vetranio rich 1 " 
 
 " Half Sicily is his. He has immense estates 
 in Africa, olive-grounds in Syria, and corn-fields 
 in Gaul. I was present at an entertainment he 
 gave at his villa in Sicily. He fitted up one of 
 his vessels from the descriptions of the furnishing 
 of Cleopatra's galley, and made his slaves swim 
 after us, as attendant Tritons. Oh, it was 
 magnificent ! ""^ 
 
 '' I should like to know him." 
 
 " You should see his cats ! He has a perfect 
 legion of them at his villa. Twelve slaves are em- 
 ployed to attend on them. He is mad about cats, 
 and declares that the old Egyptians were right to 
 worship them. He told me, yesterday, that when 
 his largest cat is dead, he will canonize her, in 
 spite of the Christians I And then, he is so kind 
 
ANTONINA. 61 
 
 to his slaves ! They are never whipped, or 
 punished ; except when they neglect or disfigure 
 themselves ; for Vetranio will allow nothing that 
 is ugly or dirty to come near him. You must 
 visit his banquetting hall, at Rome : it is per- 
 fection!" 
 
 " But why is he here l '^ 
 
 " He has come to Ravenna, charged with some 
 secret message from the Senate, and has presented 
 a rare breed of chickens to that foolish — " 
 
 " Hush ! you may be overheard ! " 
 
 " Well ! — to that wise Emperor of ours ! Ah, 
 the palace has been so pleasant since he has been 
 here ! " 
 
 At this instant, the above dialogue — from the 
 frivolity of which the universally-learned readers 
 of modern times will, we fear, recoil with contempt 
 — was interrupted by a movement on the part of 
 its hero, which showed that his occupation was at 
 an end. With the elaborate deliberation of a 
 man who disdains to exhibit himself as liable to 
 be hurried by any mortal affair, Vetranio slowly 
 folded up the vellum he had now filled with 
 
62 ANTONINA. 
 
 writing ; and, depositing it in his bosom, made a 
 sign to a slave, who happened to be then passing 
 near him with a dish of fruit. 
 
 Having received his message, the slave retired 
 to the entrance of the apartment ; and, beckoning 
 to a man who stood outside the door, motioned 
 him to approach Vetranio's couch. 
 
 This individual immediately hurried across the 
 room, to the window where the elegant Roman 
 awaited him. Not the slightest description of 
 him is needed ; for he belonged to a class with 
 which moderns are as well acquainted as ancients 
 — a class which has survived all changes of nations 
 and manners— a class which came in with the first 
 rich man in the world, and will only go out with 
 the last. In a word, he was a Parasite. 
 
 He enjoyed, however, one great superiority over 
 his modern successors. In his day, flattery was a 
 profession — in ours, it has sunk to a pursuit. 
 
 ^' I shall leave Ravenna this evening,**' said 
 Vetranio. 
 
 The parasite made three low bows and smiled 
 ecstatically. 
 
ANTONINA. bd 
 
 *' You will order my travelling equipage to be 
 at the palace gates an hour before sunset."" 
 
 The parasite declared he should never forget 
 the honour of the commission, and left the room. 
 
 The sprightly Camilla, who had overheard 
 Vetranio's command, jumped off her couch, as 
 soon as the parasite's back was turned, and, run- 
 ning up to the senator, began to reproach him for 
 the determination he had just formed. 
 
 " Have you no compunction at leaving me to 
 the dulness of this horrible palace, to satisfy your 
 idle fancy for going to Rome/' said she, pouting 
 her pretty lip, and playing with a lock of the dark 
 brown hair that clustered over Vetranio's brow. 
 
 " Has the senator Vetranio so little regard for 
 his friends, as to leave them to the mercy of the 
 Goths V said another lady, advancing with a 
 winning smile to Camilla's side. 
 
 " Ah, those Goths !" exclaimed Vetranio, turn- 
 ing to the last speaker, " Tell me, Julia, is it not 
 reported that the barbarians are really marching 
 into Italy r' 
 
 " Everybody has heard of it. The Emperor is 
 
64 ANTONINA. 
 
 SO discomposed by the rumour, that he has forbid- 
 den the very name of the Goths to be mentioned 
 in his presence again."' 
 
 *' For my part," continued Vetranio, drawing 
 Camilla towards him, and playfully tapping her 
 little dimpled hand, " I am in anxious expectation 
 of the Goths, for I have designed a statue of 
 Minerva, for which I can find no model so fit 
 as a woman of that troublesome nation. I am 
 informed upon good authority, that their limbs are 
 colossal, and their sense of propriety most obedi- 
 ently pliable under the discipline of the purse." 
 
 " If the Goths supply you with a model for any- 
 thing," said a courtier who had joined the group, 
 while Vetranio was speaking, '^ it will be wuth a 
 representation of the burning of your palace at 
 Rome, which they will enable you to paint in 
 blood, from the inexhaustible reservoir of your 
 own wounds." 
 
 The individual who uttered this last observation, 
 was remarkable among the brilliant circle around 
 him, by his excessive ugliness. Urged by his per- 
 sonal disadvantages, and the loss of all his property 
 
ANTONINA. 65 
 
 at the gaming-table, he had latterly personated a 
 character, the accomplishments attached to which, 
 rescued him by their disagreeable originality in 
 that frivolous age, from oblivion or contempt. 
 He was a Cynic philosopher. 
 
 His remark, however, produced no other effect 
 on his hearers' serenity, than to excite their merri- 
 ment. Vetranio laughed, Camilla laughed, Julia 
 laughed. The idea of a troop of barbarians ever 
 being able to burn a palace at Rome, was too 
 wildly ridiculous for any one's gravity ; and as the 
 speech was repeated in other parts of the room, in 
 spite of their dulness and lassitude the whole 
 Court laughed. 
 
 " I know not why I should be amused at that 
 man's nonsens#," said Camilla, suddenly becoming 
 grave, at the very crisis of a most attractive smile, 
 " when I am so melancholy at the thought of 
 Vetranio^s departure. What will become of me 
 when he is gone I Alas ! who will be left in the 
 palace to compose songs to my beauty and music 
 for my lute ? Who will paint me as Venus, and 
 tell me stories about the ancient Egyptians and 
 
66 ANTONTNA. 
 
 their cats? Who at the banquet will direct 
 what dishes I am to choose, and what I am to 
 reject ? Who T' — and poor little Camilla stopped 
 suddenly in her enumeration of the pleasures she 
 was about to lose, and seemed on the point of 
 weeping as piteously as she had been laughing 
 rapturously but the instant before. 
 
 Vetranio was touched — not by the compliment 
 to his more intellectual powers, but by the ad- 
 mission of his convivial supremacy, as a guide to 
 the banquet, contained in the latter part of 
 Camilla's remonstrance. The sex were then, as 
 now, culpably deficient in gastronomic enthusiasm. 
 It was, therefore, a perfect triumph, to have made 
 a convert to the science, of the youngest and love- 
 liest of the ladies of the Court. 
 
 " If she can gain leave of absence," said the 
 gratified senator, " Camilla shall accompany me 
 to Rome, and shall be present at the first cele- 
 bration of my recent discovery of a Nightingale 
 Sauce." 
 
 Camilla was in ecstacies. She seized Vetranio's 
 cheeks between her rosy little fingers, kissed him 
 
ANTONINA. 67 
 
 as enthusiastically as a child kisses a new toy, and 
 darted gaily off to prepare for her departure. 
 
 " Vetranio would be better employed,'' sneered 
 the Cynic, *' in inventing new salves for future 
 wounds, than new sauces for future nightingales ! 
 His carcase will be carved by Gothic swords as a 
 feast for the worms, before his birds are spitted 
 with Roman skewers as a feast for his guests ! 
 Is this a time for cutting statues and concocting 
 sauces ? Fie on the senators who abandon them- 
 selves to such pursuits as Vetranio's ! " 
 
 " I have other designs,'' replied the object of all 
 this moral indignation, looking with insulting in- 
 difference on the Cynic's repulsive countenance, 
 " which, from their immense importance to the 
 world, must meet with universal approval. The 
 labour that I have just achieved forms one of a 
 series of three projects, which I have for some time 
 held in contemplation. The first is an analysis of 
 the new priesthood ; the second a true personifica- 
 tion, both by painting and sculpture, of Venus ; 
 the third a discovery of what has been hitherto 
 uninvented — a nightingale sauce. By the inscru- 
 
68 ANTONINA. 
 
 table wisdom of Fate, it has been so willed that 
 the last of the objects I proposed to myself has 
 been the first attained. The sauce is composed, 
 and I have just concluded on this vellum the ode 
 that is to introduce it at my table. The analysa- 
 tion will be my next labour. It will take the form 
 of a treatise, in which, making the experience of 
 past years the groundwork of prophecy for the 
 future, I shall show the precise number of addi- 
 tional dissensions, controversies, and quarrels that 
 will be required to enable the new priesthood to 
 be themselves the destroyers of their own worship. 
 I shall ascertain by an exact computation the year 
 in which this destruction will be consummated; 
 and I have by me as the materials for my work 
 an historical summary of Christian schisms and 
 disputes in Rome for the last hundred years. As 
 for my second design, the personification of Venus, 
 it is of appalling difiiculty. It demands an inves- 
 tigation of the women of every nation under the 
 sun ; a comparison of the relative excellencies and 
 peculiarities of their several charms ; and a com- 
 bination of all that is loveliest in the infinite 
 
ANTONINA. 69 
 
 variety of their most prominent attractions under 
 one form. To forward the execution of this 
 arduous project, my tenants at home and my 
 slave-merchants abroad have orders to send to my 
 villa in Sicily all women who are born most beau- 
 tiful in the Empire, or can be brought most beau- 
 tiful from the nations around. At the fitting period 
 I shall commence my investigations, undismayed 
 by difficulty and determined on success. Never 
 yet has the true Venus been personified ! Should 
 I accomplish the task, how exquisite will be my 
 triumph ! My work will be the altar at which 
 thousands will offer up the sofest emotions of the 
 heart. It will free the prisoned imagination of 
 youth, and freshen the fading recollections on the 
 memory of age ! " * 
 
 Vetranio paused. The Cynic was struck dumb 
 with indignation. A solitary zealot for the Church, 
 who happened to be by, frowned at the analysa- 
 tion. The ladies tittered at the personification. 
 The gastronomists chuckled at the nightingale 
 
 * For the habits and pursuits of the Roman nobles, see 
 " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," chap. 31, page 480. 
 
70 ANTONINA. 
 
 sauce ; but for the first few minutes no one spoke. 
 During this temporary embarrassment, Vetranio 
 whispered a few words in JuUa''s ear ; and — just 
 as the Cynic was sufficiently recovered to retort — 
 accompanied by the lady, he quitted the room. 
 
 At most periods of the world, modern or ancient, 
 the historical student will perceive the existence of 
 a certain class of men, one great object of whose 
 creation appears to have been to supply posterity 
 with the most striking and complete examples of 
 the influence of the age on the individual. Of 
 such an order was the senator Vetranio. Under 
 the flimsy superstructure of this man's laborious 
 trifling and elaborate profligacy, lay concealed a 
 powerful and profound intellect, the legitimate 
 cravings of which — unanswered in those degene- 
 rate times — were either destroyed by privation, or 
 deceived into a relish for the intellectual garbage 
 of the age. Rather reflective than active ; rather 
 imitative than creative ; too pliable for resistance, 
 and too social for solitude : his was not the under- 
 standing which, out of itself, can supply its own 
 wants, — which asks from the world without neither 
 
ANTONINA. 71 
 
 inspiration nor sympathy, and which glories in its 
 sublime loneliness, amid the wilderness inherited 
 by its own ungenial aspirations, or created by its 
 own unwelcome achievements. Like an inland 
 sea, his mind lay calm in itself, among those exter- 
 nal influences that alone could rouse it to action, 
 or lash it into grandeur. But the storm of mighty 
 actions, or great examples, at that worthless 
 period, never impelled it to cast up its hidden 
 treasures to the day, never agitated it to its 
 inmost depths. Over its indolent surface there 
 passed but the Httle breeze of luxury, or there 
 rose but the puny wavelet of accomphshments. 
 And thus, intellectually crippled beneath the 
 degenerate influences of his age, this man, who in 
 other times might have led the destinies of an 
 empire, found, in his own, no brighter distinction 
 than the rule over jesters, and no nobler ambition 
 than the supremacy among cooks. 
 
 Never was popularity more unalloyed than 
 Vetranio's. Gifted with a disposition, the phabi- 
 Hty of which adapted itself to all emergencies, his 
 generosity disarmed enemies, while his affability 
 
72 ANTONINA. 
 
 made friends. Munificent without assumption, 
 successful without pride, he obliged with grace, 
 and shone with safety. People enjoyed his hospi- 
 tality, for they knew that it was disinterested ; and 
 admired his acquirements, for they felt that they 
 were unobtrusive. Sometimes (as in his dialogue 
 with the Cynic) the whim of the moment, or the 
 sting of a sarcasm, drew from him a hint at his 
 station, or a display of his eccentricities ; but as 
 he was always the first soon afterwards to lead 
 the laugh at his own outbreak, his credit as a 
 noble suffered nothing by his infirmity as a man. 
 Gaily and attractively he moved in all grades of 
 the society of his age, winning his social laurels in 
 every rank, without making a rival to dispute their 
 possession, or an enemy to detract from their 
 value. 
 
 And yet the enchanting affability, the prodigal 
 generosity, which made him this enviable position 
 in the world, was a necessity, rather than a virtue, 
 in such a character as his. He was kind to his 
 inferiors, more because he hated the contact of 
 suffering, and the contamination of discontent. 
 
ANTONINA. 73 
 
 than because he desired to be beloved, or delighted 
 to be benevolent. He was devoted to his own 
 class, because quarrels jarred with his disposition, 
 and rivalries disturbed the luxurious serenity which 
 indulgence had made a second nature to his feel- 
 ings. Powerful by station, and unlimited in 
 resources, that exemption from troubles and anxi- 
 eties which most men hope for as a boon, he era- 
 ployed every effort to pursue as a system. In 
 others, such an extended selfishness would have 
 constantly betrayed itself; but, hallowed by wealth, 
 and veiled by ingenuity, it assumed in him the form 
 of philosophy ; and the senator was quoted as an 
 elegant Epicurean, where the plebeian would have 
 been branded as a heartless egotist. 
 
 On quitting the court waiting-room, Vetranio 
 and Julia descended the palace stairs, and passed 
 into the Emperor's garden. Used generally as an 
 evening lounge, this place was now untenanted, 
 save by the few attendants engaged in cultivating 
 the flower beds, and watering the smooth, shady 
 lawns. Entering one of the most retired of 
 the numerous summer-houses among the trees, 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
74 ANTONINA. 
 
 Vetranio motioned his companion to a seat ; and 
 then abruptly addressed her in the following 
 words : — 
 
 " I have heard that you are about to depart for 
 Rome — Is it true !" 
 
 He asked this question in a low voice, and with 
 a manner in its earnestness strangely at variance 
 with the volatile gaiety which had characterised 
 him, but a few moments before, among the nobles 
 of the court. As Julia answered him in the affir- 
 mative, his countenance expressed a lively satis- 
 faction ; and, seating himself by her side, he 
 continued the conversation thus : — 
 
 " If I thought that you intended to stay for any 
 length of time in the city, I should venture upon 
 a fresh extortion from your friendship, by asking 
 you to lend me your little villa at Aricia !" 
 
 " You shall take with you to Rome an order on 
 my steward to place everything there at your 
 entire disposal." 
 
 " My generous Julia ! You are of the gifted 
 few who really know how to confer a favour! 
 Another woman would have asked me why I wanted 
 
ANTONINA. 75 
 
 the villa — you give it unreservedly. So delicate 
 an unwillingness to intrude on a secret, reminds 
 me that the secret should now be yours !" 
 
 To explain the easy confidence that existed 
 between Vetranio and Julia, it is necessary to 
 inform the reader that the lady — although still 
 attractive in appearance — was of an age to muse 
 on her past, rather than to meditate on her future 
 conquests. She had kno\\Ti her eccentric com- 
 panion from his boyhood, had been once flattered 
 in his verses, and was sensible enough — now that 
 her charms were on the wane — to be as content 
 with the friendship of the senator, as she had for- 
 merly been enraptured with the adoration of the 
 youth. 
 
 *' You are too penetrating" — resumed Vetranio 
 after a short pause — " not to have already sus- 
 pected that I only require your villa to assist me 
 in the concealment of an intrigue. So peculiar is 
 my adventure in its different circumstances, that 
 to make use of my palace as the scene of its 
 development, would be to risk a discovery which 
 might produce the immediate subversion of all my 
 
 £2 
 
76 ANTONINA. 
 
 designs. But I fear the length of my confession 
 will exceed the duration of your patience ! " 
 
 " You have aroused my curiosity. I could listen 
 to you for ever I" 
 
 " A short time before I took my departure from 
 Rome for this place,"*' continued Vetranio, " I 
 encountered an adventure of the most extra- 
 ordinary nature, which has haunted me with the 
 most extraordinary perseverance, and which will 
 have, I feel assured, the most extraordinary 
 results. I was sitting one evening in the garden 
 of my palace on the Pincian Mount, occupied in 
 trying a new composition on my lute. In one of 
 the pauses of the melody, which was tender and 
 plaintive, I heard sounds that resembled the 
 sobbing of some one in distress among the trees 
 behind me. I looked cautiously round, and 
 discerned half hidden by the verdure, the figure of 
 a young girl, who appeared to be listening to the 
 music with the most entranced attention. Flat- 
 tered by such a testimony to my skill, and anxious 
 to gain a nearer view of my mysterious visitant, I 
 advanced towards her hiding-place, forgetting in 
 
ANTONINA. 77 
 
 my haste to continue playing on the lute. The 
 instant the music ceased, she discerned me and 
 disappeared. Determined to behold her, I again 
 struck the chords, and in a few minutes I saw her 
 white robe once more among the trees. I 
 redoubled my efforts, — I played with the utmost 
 expression the most pathetic parts of the melody. 
 As if under the influence of a charm, she began to 
 advance towards me, now hesitating, now moving 
 back a few steps, now approaching, half reluctantly 
 half willingly, until utterly vanquished by the 
 long trembhng close of the last cadence of the air, 
 she ran suddenly up to me, and falling at my feet, 
 raised her hands as if to implore my pardon. 
 
 " I never saw anything so enchanting as she 
 was in that position. Her large soft eyes, bright 
 with tears, looked piteously up in my face, her 
 delicate lips trembled as if she wished to speak, 
 but dared not, her smooth round arms were the 
 very perfection of beauty. Child as she seemed in 
 years and emotions, she looked a woman in love- 
 liness and form. For the moment, I was too much 
 astonished by the suddenness of her supplicating 
 
78 ANTONINA. 
 
 action to move or speak. As soon as I recovered 
 myself, I attempted to fondle and console her, 
 but she shrunk from my embrace, and seemed 
 inclined to escape from me again, until I touched 
 once more the strings of the lute, and then she 
 uttered a subdued exclamation of delight, nestled 
 close up to me, and looked into my face with such 
 a strange expression of mingled adoration and 
 rapture, that I declare to you, Julia, I felt as 
 bashful before her as a boy. 
 
 " The lute was my sole means of procuring any 
 communication with her. If I ceased playing, we 
 were as strangers; if I resumed, we were as 
 friends. So, subduing the notes of the instrument, 
 while she spoke to me in a soft tremulous musical 
 voice, I still continued to play. By this plan I 
 discovered at our first interview, that she was the 
 daughter of one Numerian, that she was on the 
 point of completing her fourteenth year, and that 
 she was called Antonina. I had only succeeded in 
 gaining this mere outline of her story, when, as if 
 struck by some sudden apprehension, she tore 
 herself from me v/ith a look of the utmost terror. 
 
ANTONINA. 79 
 
 and entreating me not to follow her if I ever 
 desired to see her again, she disappeared rapidly 
 among the trees. 
 
 " The next evening, I revisited the garden- 
 grove ; and, as soon as I struck the chords, as if 
 by magic, she again approached. At this second 
 interview I learned the reason of her mysterious 
 appearances and departures. Her father, she 
 told me, was one of a new sect, who imagine — with 
 what reason it is impossible to comprehend — that 
 they recommend themselves to their Deity, by 
 making their lives one perpetual round of bodily 
 suffering and mental anguish. Not content with 
 distorting all his own feelings and faculties, this 
 tyrant perpetrated his insane austerities upon the 
 poor child as well. He forbade her to enter a 
 theatre, to look on sculpture, to read poetry, to 
 listen to music. He made her learn long prayers, 
 and attend to interminable sermons. He allowed 
 her no companions of her own age — not even girls 
 like herself. The only recreation that she could 
 obtain, was the permission — granted with much 
 reluctance and many rebukes — to cultivate a little 
 
80 ANTONINA. 
 
 garden which belonged to the house they lived in, 
 and joined at one point the groves round my 
 palace. There, while she was engaged over her 
 flowers, she first heard the sound of my lute. For 
 many months before I had discovered her, she had 
 been in the habit of climbing the inclosure that 
 bounded her garden, and hiding herself among the 
 trees to listen to the music, whenever her father's 
 concerns took him abroad. She had been dis- 
 covered in this occupation by an old man appointed 
 to watch her in his master's absence. The atten- 
 dant, however, on hearing her confession, not only 
 promised to keep her secret, but permitted her to 
 continue her visits to my grove whenever I chanced 
 to be playing there on the lute. Now the most 
 mysterious part of this matter is, that the girl 
 seemed — in spite of his severity towards her — to 
 have a great affection for her surly parent ; for, 
 when I offered to deliver her from his custody, she 
 declared that nothing could induce her to desert 
 him ; not even the attraction of living among fine 
 pictures and hearing beautiful music every hour in 
 the day. But, I see I weary you ; and indeed, it 
 
ANTONINA. 81 
 
 is evident from the length of the shadows, that the 
 hour of my departure is at hand. Let me then pass 
 from my introductory interviews with Antonina, to 
 the consequences that had resulted from them when 
 I set forth on my journey to Ravenna. 
 
 " You will easily imagine, Julia, that the 
 strangeness of this girFs situation, and the origi- 
 nality of her ideas, invested her with an attraction 
 for me, which the charms of her person and age 
 contributed immensely to heighten. She delighted 
 my faculties as a poet, as much as she fired my 
 feelings as a man ; and I determined to lure her 
 from the tyrannical protection of her father, by 
 the employment of every artifice that my ingenuity 
 could suggest. I began by teaching her to exer- 
 cise for herself the talent which had so attracted 
 her in another. By the familiarity engendered on 
 both sides by such an occupation, I hoped to gain 
 as much in affection from her as she acquired in 
 skill from me, but, to my astonishment, I still 
 found her as indifferent towards the master and as 
 tender towards the music, as she had appeared at 
 our first interview. If she had repelled my 
 
 e3 
 
82 ANTONINA. 
 
 advances, if they had overwhelmed her with con- 
 fusion, I could have adapted myself to her humour, 
 I should have felt the encouragement of hope ; but 
 the coldness, the carelessness; the unnatural, incom- 
 prehensible ease with which she received even my 
 caresses, utterly disconcerted me. It seemed as if 
 she could only regard me as a moving statue, as a 
 mere impersonation, immaterial as the science I 
 was teaching her. If I spoke, she hardly looked 
 on me ; if I moved, she scarcely noticed the action. 
 I could not consider it dislike, she seemed too 
 gentle to nourish such a feeling for any creature 
 on earth. I could not believe it coldness, she was 
 all life, all agitation, if she heard only a few notes 
 of music. When she touched the chords of the 
 instrument, her whole frame trembled. Her eyes, 
 mild, serious, and thoughtful when she looked on 
 Twe, now brightened with delight, now softened 
 with tears, when she listened to the lute. As day 
 by day, her skill in music increased, so her manner 
 towards me grew more inexplicably indifferent. 
 At length, weary of the constant disappointments 
 that I experienced, and determined to make a last 
 
ANTONINA. 83 
 
 effort to touch her heart, by awakening her grati- 
 tude, I presented her with the very lute which she 
 had at first heard, and on which she had now 
 learned to play. Never have I seen any human 
 being so rapturously delighted as this incompre- 
 hensible girl, when she received the instrument 
 from my hands. She alternately wept and laughed 
 over it, she kissed it, fondled it, spoke to it, as if it 
 had been a living thing. But when I approached 
 to suppress the expressions of thankfulness that 
 she poured on me for the gift, she suddenly hid the 
 lute in her robe, as if afraid that I should deprive 
 her of it, and hurried rapidly from my sight. The 
 next day I waited for her at our accustomed meet- 
 ing-place, but she never appeared. I sent a slave 
 disguised to her father^s house, but she would hold 
 no communication with him. It was evident, that 
 now she had gained her end, she cared no more to 
 behold me. In my first moments of irritation, I 
 determined to make her feel my power, if she 
 despised my kindness ; but reflection convinced 
 me, from my acquaintance with her character, that 
 in such a matter force was impolitic, that I should 
 
84 ANTONINA. 
 
 risk my popularity in Rome, and engage myself in 
 an unworthy quarrel to no purpose. Dissatisfied 
 with myself, and disappointed in the girl, I obeyed 
 the first dictates of my impatience, and seizing the 
 opportunity afforded by my duties in the senate 
 of escaping from the scene of my defeated hopes, 
 I departed angrily for Ravenna. 
 
 " You smile, Julia, but hear me to the end and 
 you will find that I have not yet resigned myself 
 to defeat. For the few days that I have 
 remained here, Antonina's image has incessantly 
 troubled my thoughts. I perceive that my incli- 
 nation as well as my reputation, is concerned in 
 subduing her ungrateful aversion. I suspect that 
 my anxiety to gain her, will, if unremoved, so far 
 influence my character, that from Vetranio the 
 Serene, I shall be changed into Vetranio the 
 Sardonic. Pride, honour, curiosity, and love, all 
 urge me to her conquest. To prepare for my ban- 
 quet is an excuse to the Court for my sudden 
 departure from this place ; the real object of my 
 journey is Antonina alone. 
 
 " You will ask me how I purpose to obtain 
 
ANTONINA. 85 
 
 another interview with her ? I answer, that the 
 girl's attendant has voluntarily offered himself as 
 an instrument for the prosecution of my plans. 
 The very day before I departed from Rome he 
 suddenly presented himself to me, in my garden, 
 and proposed to introduce me into Numerian's 
 house — having first demanded, with the air more 
 of an equal than an inferior, whether the report 
 that I was still a secret adherent of the old religion, 
 of the worship of the gods, was true. Suspicious 
 of the fellow's motives (for he abjured all recom- 
 pense as the reward of his treachery), and irritated 
 by the girl's recent ingratitude, I treated his offer 
 with contempt. Now, however, that my dissatis- 
 faction is calmed, and my anxiety aroused, I am 
 determined, at all hazards, to trust myself to this 
 man, be his motives for aiding me what they may. 
 If my efforts at my expected interview — and I will 
 not spare them — are rewarded with success, it will 
 be necessary to obtain some refuge for Antonina, 
 that will neither be suspected nor searched. For 
 such a hiding-place, nothing can be more admirably 
 adapted than your Arician villa. Do you — now 
 
86 ANTONINA. 
 
 that you know for what use it is intended — repent of 
 your generous disposal of it in aid of my design V 
 " I am delighted to have had it to bestow on 
 you. Your adventure is indeed uncommon — I 
 burn with impatience to hear how it will end. 
 Whatever happens, you may depend on my secresy, 
 and count on my assistance. But see, the sun is 
 already verging towards the west ; and yonder 
 comes one of your slaves to inform you, I doubt 
 not, that your equipage is prepared. Return with 
 me to the palace, and I will supply you with the 
 letter necessary to introduce you as master to my 
 country abode." 
 
 * * » * * 
 
 The worthy citizens of Ravenna assembled in 
 the square before the palace, to behold the senator's 
 departure, had entirely exhausted such innocent 
 materials for amusement, as consisted in staring 
 at the guards, catching the clouds of gnats that 
 hovered about their ears, and quarrelling with 
 each other ; and were now reduced to a state of 
 very noisy and unanimous impatience, when their 
 discontent was suddenly and most effectually 
 
ANTONINA. 87 
 
 appeased by the appearance of the travelling 
 equipage, with Vetranio and Camilla, outside 
 the palace gates. 
 
 Uproarious shouts greeted the appearance of the 
 senator and his magnificent retinue ; but they were 
 increased a hundred-fold, when the chief slaves, by 
 their master's command, each scattered a handful 
 of small coin among the poorer classes of the spec- 
 tators. Every man among that heterogeneous 
 assemblage of rogues, fools, and idlers, roared his 
 loudest and capered his highest, in honour of the 
 generous patrician. Gradually and carefully the 
 illustrious travellers moved through the crowd 
 around them to the city gate. And thence, amid 
 incessant shouts of applause, raised with imposing 
 unanimity of lung, and wrought up to the most 
 distracting discordancy of noise, Vetranio and his 
 lively companion departed in triumph for Rome. 
 * * * * * 
 
 A few days after this event, the citizens were 
 again assembled at the same place and hour — pro- 
 bably to witness another patrician departure, when 
 their ears were assailed by the unexpected sound. 
 
88 ANTONINA. 
 
 produced by the call to arms, which was followed 
 immediately by the closing of the city gates. They 
 had scarcely asked each other the meaning of these 
 unusual occurrences, when a peasant, half frantic 
 with terror, rushed into the square, shouting out the 
 terrible intelligence that the Goths were in sight ! 
 
 The courtiers heard the news, and starting from 
 a luxurious repast, hurried to the palace windows 
 to behold the portentous spectacle. For the 
 remainder of the evening the banquetting tables 
 were unapproached by the guests. 
 
 The wretched Emperor was surprised among 
 his poultry by that dreaded intelligence. He, 
 too, hastened to the windows ; and, looking forth, 
 saw the army of avengers passing in contempt his 
 solitary fortress, and moving swiftly onward to- 
 wards defenceless Rome. Long after the darkness 
 had hidden the masses of that mighty multitude 
 from his eyes, did he remain staring helplessly 
 upon the fading landscape, in a stupor of astonish- 
 ment and dread ; and, for the first time since he 
 had possessed them, his flock of fowls were left 
 for that night untended by their master's hand. 
 
BOOK SECOND. 
 
 " Res hominum tanta caligine volvi 
 
 Adspicerem, laetosque diu florere nocentes 
 Vexarique pios : rursus labefacta cadebat 
 
 Relligio" 
 
 Claudian. 
 
 " The lot of human kind I found 
 
 Involved in mazy darkness, spread around ; 
 Crime revelling in joy and plenteous store, 
 While suff'ring Virtue dire distresses bore : 
 
 Religion, weakened, lost again her s-way " 
 
 TramlatUm by Hawkins. 
 
CHAPTEE I. 
 
 ROME. 
 
 The perusal of the title to this chapter will we 
 fear excite emotions of apprehension, rather than 
 of curiosity, in the breasts of experienced readers. 
 They will doubtless imagine that it is portentous 
 of long rhapsodies on those wonders of antiquity, 
 the description of which has long since become 
 absolutely nauseous to them by incessant iteration. 
 They will foresee wailings over the Palace of the 
 Caesars, and meditations among the arches of the 
 Colosseum, loading a long series of weary para- 
 graphs to the very chapter's end ; and, conside- 
 rately anxious to spare their attention a task from 
 which it recoils, they will unanimously hurry past 
 the dreaded desert of conventional reflection, to 
 alight on the first oasis that may present itself, 
 
VZ ANTONINA. 
 
 whether it be formed by a new division of the 
 story, or suddenly indicated by the appearance of 
 a dialogue. Animated, therefore, by apprehen- 
 sions such as these, we hasten to assure them, that 
 in no instance will the localities of our story trench 
 upon the limits of the well-worn Forum, or mount 
 the arches of the exhausted Colosseum. It is with 
 the beings, and not the buildings of old Rome, 
 that their attention is to be occupied. We desire 
 to present them with a picture of the inmost 
 emotions of the times, — of the living, breathing, 
 actions and passions of the people of the doomed 
 Empire. Antiquarian topography and classical 
 architecture we leave to abler pens, and resign to 
 other readers. 
 
 It is, however, necessary that the sphere in 
 which the personages of our story are about to act, 
 should be in some measure indicated, in order to 
 facilitate the comprehension of their respective 
 movements. That portion of the extinct city 
 which we design to revive has left few traces of its 
 existence in the modern town. Its sites are tradi- 
 tionary — its buildings are dust. The church rises 
 
ANTONINA. 93 
 
 where the temple once stood ; and the wine-shop 
 now lures the passing idler, where the bath invited 
 his ancestor of old. 
 
 The walls of Rome are in extent, at the present 
 day, the same as they were at the period of which 
 we now write. But here, all analogy between the 
 ancient and modern city ends. The houses that 
 these walls were once scarcely wide enough to 
 inclose, have long since vanished, and their modern 
 successors occupy but a third of the space once 
 allotted to the capital of the Empire. 
 
 Beyond the walls, immense suburbs stretched 
 forth in the days of old. Gorgeous villas, luxuri- 
 ous groves, temples, theatres, baths — interspersed 
 by colonies of dwellings belonging to the lower 
 orders of the people — surrounded the mighty city. 
 Of these innumerable abodes, hardly a trace 
 remains. The modern traveller, as he looks 
 forth over the site of the famous suburbs, be- 
 holds, here and there, a ruined aqueduct, or 
 a crumbling tomb, tottering on the surface of a 
 pestilential marsh. 
 
 The present entrance to Rome by the Porta 
 
94 ANTONINA. 
 
 del Popolo, occupies the same site as the ancient 
 Flaminian Gate. Three great streets now lead 
 from it towards the southern extremity of the 
 city, and form with their tributaries the principal 
 portion of modern Rome. On one side they are 
 bounded by the Pincian Hill, on the other by the 
 Tiber. Of these streets, those nearest the river 
 occupy the position of the famous Campus Martins, 
 those on the other side the ancient approaches to 
 the gardens of Sallust and LucuUus, on the 
 Pincian Mount. 
 
 On the opposite bank of the Tiber (gained by 
 the Ponte St. Angelo, formerly the Pons Elius), 
 two streets pierced through an irregular and 
 populous neighbourhood, conduct to the modern 
 Church of St. Peter. At the period of our story 
 this part of the city was of much greater conse- 
 quence, both in size and appearance than it is at 
 present, and led directly to the ancient Basilica 
 of St. Peter, which stood on the same site as that 
 now occupied by the modern edifice. 
 
 The events about to be narrated, occur entirely 
 in the parts of the city just described. From the 
 
ANTONINA. 95 
 
 Pincian Hill, across the Campus Martius, over 
 the Pons Elius, and on to the Basilica of St. 
 Peter, the reader may be often invited to accom- 
 pany us, but he will be spared all necessity of 
 penetrating familiar ruins, or mourning over the 
 sepulchres of departed patriots. 
 
 Ere, however, we revert to former actors, or 
 proceed to new characters, it will be requisite to 
 people the streets that we here attempt to revive. 
 By this process, it is hoped that the reader will 
 gain that familiarity with the manners and customs 
 of the Romans of the fifth century, on which the 
 influence of this story mainly depends, and which 
 we despair of being able to instil by a philoso- 
 phical disquisition on the features of the age. A few 
 pages of illustration will serve our purpose better, 
 perhaps, than volumes of historical description. 
 There is no more unerring index to the character 
 of a people, than the streets of their cities. 
 
 It is near evening. In the widest part of the 
 Campus Martius crowds of people are assembled 
 before the gates of a palace. They are congre- 
 gated to receive several baskets of provisions. 
 
96 ANTONINA. 
 
 distributed with ostentatious charity by the owner 
 of the mansion. The incessant clamour and 
 agitation of the impatient multitude, form a 
 strange contrast to the stately serenity of the 
 natural and artificial objects by which they are 
 inclosed on all sides. 
 
 The space they occupy is oblong in shape and of 
 great extent in size. Part of it is formed by a 
 turf walk shaded with trees, part by the paved 
 approaches to the palace and the public baths 
 which stand in its immediate neighbourhood. 
 These two edifices are remarkable by their mag- 
 nificent outward adornments of statues, and the 
 elegance and number of the flights of steps, by 
 which they are respectively entered. With the 
 inferior buildings, the market-places and the 
 gardens attached to them, they are sufiSciently 
 extensive to form the boundary of one side of the 
 immediate view. The appearance of monotony 
 which might at other times be remarked in the 
 vastness and regularity of their white fronts, is, at 
 this moment, agreeably broken by several gaily- 
 coloured awnings, stretched over their doors and 
 
ANTONINA. 97 
 
 balconies. The sun is now shining on them with 
 overpowering brightness ; the metallic ornaments 
 on their windows glitter like gems of fire ; even 
 the trees which form their groves, partake of the 
 universal flow of light, and fail like the objects 
 around them to offer to the weary eye either 
 refreshment or repose. 
 
 Towards the north, the Mausoleum of Augustus, 
 towering proudly up into the brilliant sky, at once 
 attracts the attention. From its position, parts 
 of this noble building are already in shade. Not 
 a human being is visible on any part of its mighty 
 galleries — it stands solitary and sublime, an im- 
 pressive embodiment of the emotions which it was 
 
 raised to represent. 
 
 On the side opposite the Palace and the Baths 
 
 is the turf walk already mentioned. Trees, thickly 
 
 planted and interlaced by vines, cast a luxurious 
 
 shade over this spot. In their interstices, viewed 
 
 from a distance, appear glimpses of gay dresses, 
 
 groups of figures in repose, stands loaded with 
 
 fruit and flowers, and innumerable white marble 
 
 statues of fawns and wood-nymphs. From this 
 
98 ANTONINA. 
 
 delicious retreat the rippling of fountains is to be 
 heard, occasionally interrupted by the rustling of 
 leaves, or the plaintive cadences of the Roman 
 flute. 
 
 Southward, two Pagan temples stand in lonely 
 grandeur among a host of monuments and tro- 
 phies. Although the laws now forbid the worship 
 for which they were built, the hand of reform has 
 as yet not ventured to doom them to ruin, or 
 adapt them to Christian purposes. None venture 
 to tread their once crowded colonnades. No priest 
 appears to give the oracles from tlieir doors — no 
 sacrifices reek upon their naked altars. Under 
 their roofs, visited only by the light that steals 
 through their narrow entrances, stand unnoticed, 
 unworshipped, unmoved, the mighty idols of old 
 Rome.* Human emotion, which made them Omni- 
 potence once, has left them but stone now. The 
 " Star in the East " has already dimmed the fearful 
 
 * " Such was the respect which the Christian Emperors paid 
 even to the pi'ejudices of the Romans, that idols, when proscribed 
 in the provinces, were still tolerated in the capital and allowed 
 to occupy their rich shrines, and sit enthroned in their deserted 
 temples." — Eustace's Classical Tour. 
 
ANTONINA. 99 
 
 halo which the devotion of bloodshed once wreathed 
 round their forms. Forsaken and alone they stand 
 but as the gloomy monuments of the greatest 
 delusion ever organised by the ingenuity of man. 
 
 We have now, so to express it, exhibited the 
 frame surrounding the moving picture, which we 
 shall next attempt to present to the reader by 
 mixing with the multitude before the Palace gates. 
 
 This assembly resolved itself into three divisions : 
 that collected before the palace steps, that loitering 
 about the public baths, and that reposing in the 
 shade of the groves. The first was of the most 
 consequence in numbers, and of the greatest variety 
 in appearance. Composed of rogues of the worst 
 order from every quarter of the world, it might 
 be said to present, in its general aspect of numerical 
 importance, the very sublime of degradation. 
 Confident in their rude union of common avidity, 
 these worthy citizens vented their insolence on all 
 objects, and in every direction, with a careless im- 
 partiality which would have shamed the most 
 victorious efforts of modern mobs. The hubbub 
 of voices was perfectly fearful. The coarse 
 
 f2 
 
100 ANTONINA. 
 
 execrations of drunken Gauls, the licentious wit- 
 ticisms of effeminate Greeks, the noisy satisfaction 
 of native Romans, the clamorous indignation of 
 irritable Jews ; all sounded together in one in- 
 cessant chorus of discordant noises. Nor were the 
 senses of sight and smell more agreeably assailed 
 than the faculty of hearing, by this anomalous con- 
 gregation. Immodest youth and irreverent age ; 
 woman savage, man cowardly ; the swarthy Ethio- 
 pian beslabbered with stinking oil ; the stolid 
 Briton begrimed with dirt ; these, and a hundred 
 other varying combinations, to be imagined rather 
 than expressed, met the attention in every direc- 
 tion. To describe the odours exhaled by the heat, 
 from this seething mixture of many pollutions, 
 would be to force the reader to close the book ; we 
 prefer to return to the distribution which was the 
 cause of this degrading tumult, and which consisted 
 of small baskets of roasted meat, packed with com- 
 mon fruits and vegetables, and handed, or rather 
 flung down to the mob by the servants of the noble- 
 man who gave the feast. The people revelled in the 
 abundance thus presented to them. They threw 
 
ANTONINA. 101 
 
 themselves upon it like wild beasts ; they devoured 
 it like hogs, or bore it off like plunderers ; while, 
 secure in the eminence on which they were placed, 
 the purveyors of this public banquet expressed their 
 contempt for its noisy recipients, by holding their 
 noses, stopping their ears, turning their backs, and 
 other pantomimic demonstrations of lofty and 
 excessive disgust. These actions did not escape 
 the attention of those members of the assembly 
 who, having eaten their fill, were at leisure to make 
 use of their tongues ; and who showered an inces- 
 sant storm of abuse on the heads of their bene- 
 factor''s retainers. 
 
 " See those fellows ! " cried one ; " they are the 
 waiters at our feast, and they mock us to our 
 faces ! Down with the filthy kitchen thieves ! " 
 
 " Excellently well said, Davus !— but who is to 
 approach them ? They stink at this distance ! " 
 
 " The rotten-bodied knaves have the noses of 
 dogs and the carcases of goats.'"* 
 
 Then came a chorus of voices — " Down with 
 them ! Down with them ! " In the midst of which 
 an indignant freed-man advanced to rebuke the 
 
102 ANTONINA. 
 
 mob, receiving, as the reward of his temerity, a 
 shower of missiles and a volley of curses; after 
 which he was thus addressed by a huge greasy 
 butcher, hoisted on his companions' shoulders : 
 
 " By the soul of the Emperor, could I get near 
 you — you rogue ! — I would quarter you with my 
 fingers alone ! — A grinning scoundrel that jeers at 
 others ! A filthy flatterer that dirts the very 
 ground he walks on. By the blood of the martyrs, 
 should I fling the sweeping of the slaughter-house 
 at him, he knows not where to get himself dried !" 
 
 " Thou rag of a man," roared a neighbour of 
 the indignant butcher's, " dost thou frown upon 
 the guests of thy master, the very scrapings of 
 whose skin are worth more than thy whole carcase ! 
 It is easier to make a drinking vessel of the skull 
 of a flea, than to make an honest man of such a 
 villainous night-walker as thou art !" 
 
 " Health and prosperity to our noble enter- 
 tainer !" shouted one section of the grateful crowd 
 as the last speaker paused for breath. 
 
 " Death to all knaves of parasites !" chimed in 
 another. 
 
ANTONINA. 103 
 
 " Honour to the citizens of Rome !" roared a 
 third party with modest enthusiasm. 
 
 " Give that freed-man our bones to pick !'" 
 screamed an urchin from the outskirts of the crowd. 
 
 This ingenious piece of advice was immediately 
 followed ; and the populace gave vent to a shout 
 of triumph as the unfortunate freed-man scared by 
 a new volley of missiles, retreated with ignominious 
 expedition to the shelter of his patron's halls. 
 
 In the slight and purified specimen of the " table 
 talk " of a Roman mob, which we have here ven- 
 tured to exhibit, the reader will perceive that 
 extraordinary mixture of servility and insolence 
 which characterised not only the conversation, but 
 the actions of the lower orders of society, at the 
 period of which we write. Oppressed and degraded 
 on the one hand, to a point of misery scarcely 
 conceivable to the public of the present day ; the 
 poorer classes in Rome were, on the other, invested 
 with such a degree of moral license, and permitted 
 such an extent of political privilege, as flattered 
 their vanity into blinding their sense of indigna- 
 tion. Slaves in their season of servitude, masters 
 
 r 
 
104 ANTONINA. 
 
 in their hours of recreation, they presented as a 
 class one of the most amazing social anomalies 
 ever existing in any nation; and formed, in their 
 dangerous and artificial position, one of the most 
 important of the internal causes of the downfall 
 of Rome. 
 
 The steps of the public baths were almost as 
 crowded as the space before the neighbouring 
 building. Incessant streams of people, either 
 entering or departing, poured over the broad flag- 
 stones of its marble colonnades. This concourse, 
 although composed in some parts of the same class 
 of people as that assembled before the palace, pre- 
 sented a certain appearance of respectability. 
 Here and there — chequering the dusky monotony 
 of masses of dirty tunics — might be discerned the 
 refreshing vision of a clean robe, or the grateful 
 indication of a handsome person. Little groups, 
 removed as far as possible from the neighbourhood 
 of the noisy plebeians, were scattered about, either 
 engaged in animated conversation, or listlessly 
 succumbing to the lassitude induced by a recent 
 bath. An instant's attention to the subject of 
 
ANTONINA. 105 
 
 discourse among the more active of these indi- 
 viduals, will aid us in pursuing our social revelations. 
 
 The loudest voice among the speakers at this 
 particular moment, proceeded from a tall thin 
 sinister-looking man, who was haranguing a little 
 group of listeners with great vehemence and 
 fluency. 
 
 " I tell you, Socius," said he, turning suddenly 
 upon one of his companions, " that unless new 
 slave-laws are made, my calling is at an end. My 
 patron's estate requires incessant supplies of these 
 wretches. I do my best to satisfy the demand, 
 and the only result of my labour is, that the 
 miscreants either endanger my life, or fly with 
 impunity to the gangs of robbers infesting our 
 woods." 
 
 " Truly I am sorry for you, but what alteration 
 would you have made in the slave-laws? " 
 
 " I would empower bailifls to slay upon the spot 
 all slaves whom they thought disorderly, as an 
 example to the rest ! " 
 
 " What would such a permission avail you ? 
 These creatures are necessary, and such a law 
 
 F 3 
 
106 ANTONINA. 
 
 would exterminate them in a few months. Can 
 you not break their spirit with labour, bind their 
 strength with chains, and vanquish their obstinacy 
 with dungeons ? " 
 
 " All this I have done, but they die under the 
 discipline or escape from their prisons. I have 
 now three hundred slaves on my patron's estates. 
 Against those born on our lands I have little to 
 urge. Many of them, it is true, begin the day 
 with weeping and end it with death ; but for the 
 most part, thanks to their diurnal allowance of 
 stripes, they are tolerably submissive. It is with 
 the wretches that I have been obliged to purchase 
 from prisoners of war and the people of revolted 
 towns, that I am so dissatisfied. Punishments 
 have no effect on them, they are incessantly 
 indolent, sulky, desperate. It was but the other 
 day that ten of them poisoned themselves while 
 at work in the fields, and fifty more after setting 
 fire to a farm-house while my back was turned, 
 escaped to join a gang of their companions who 
 are now robbers in the woods. These fellows, 
 however, are the last of the troop who will 
 
ANTONINA. ] 07 
 
 perpetrate such offences. With the concurrence 
 of my patron, I have adopted a plan that will 
 henceforth tame them efficiently ! " 
 
 " Are you at liberty to communicate it ? " 
 
 " By the keys of St. Peter, I wish I could see 
 it practised on every estate in the land ! It is 
 this : — Near a sulphur lake at some distance from 
 my farm-house, is a tract of marshy land, over- 
 spread here and there by the ruins of an ancient 
 slaughter-house. I propose to dig in this place 
 several subterranean caverns, each of which shall 
 be capable of holding twenty men. Here my 
 mutinous slaves shall sleep after their day's labour. 
 The entrances shall be closed until morning with 
 a large stone, on which I will have engraven this 
 inscription : — ' These are the dormitories invented 
 by Gordian, bailiff of Saturninus a nobleman, 
 for the reception of refractory slaves." 
 
 "Your plan is ingenious; but I suspect your 
 slaves, so insensible to hardships are the brutal 
 herd, will sleep as unconcernedly in their new dor- 
 mitories as in their old." 
 
 " Sleep ! It will be a most original species of 
 
108 ANTONINA. 
 
 repose that they will taste there ! The stench of 
 the sulphur lake will breathe Sabean odours for 
 them over a couch of mud ! Their anointing oil 
 will be the shme of attendant reptiles ! Their 
 liquid perfumes will be the stagnant oozings from 
 their chamber roof ! Their music will be the 
 croaking of frogs and the humming of gnats ; and 
 as for their adornments, why they will be decked 
 forth with head-garlands of twining worms, and 
 moveable brooches of cockchafers and toads ! 
 Tell me now, most sagacious Socius, do you still 
 think that amidst such luxuries as these my slaves 
 will sleep ? " 
 
 " No ; they will die." 
 
 " You are again wrong. They will curse and 
 rave perhaps, but that is of no consequence. They 
 will work the longer above ground to shorten the 
 term of their repose beneath. They will wake at 
 an instant's notice, and come forth at a moment's 
 signal. I have no fear of their dying ! " 
 
 " Do you leave Rome soon ? " 
 
 " I go this evening, taking with me such a sup- 
 ply of trustworthy assistants as will enable me 
 
ANTONINA. 109 
 
 to execute my plan without delay. Farewell, 
 Socius ! '' 
 
 " Most ingenious of bailiffs, I j bid you fare- 
 well ! " 
 
 As the worthy Gordian stalked off, big with the 
 dignity of his new projects, the gestures and tones 
 of a man who formed one of a little group col- 
 lected in a remote part of the portico he was 
 about to quit, attracted his attention. Curiosity 
 formed as conspicuous an ingredient in this man's 
 character as cruelty. He stole behind the base 
 of a neighbouring pillar ; and as the frequent re- 
 petition of the word " Goths " struck his ear, (the 
 report of that nation's impending invasion having 
 by this time reached Rome,) he carefully disposed 
 himself to listen with the most implicit attention 
 to the speaker's voice. 
 
 " Goths ! '^ cried the man in the stern,, concen- 
 trated accents of despair. " Is there one among 
 us to whom this report of their advance upon 
 Rome does not speak of hope rather than of 
 dread? Have we a chance of rising from the 
 degradation forced on us by our superiors until 
 
110 ANTONINA. 
 
 this den of heartless triflers and shameless cowards 
 is swept from the very earth that it pollutes ? " 
 
 " Your sentiments on the evils of our condition 
 are undoubtedly most just," observed a fat, pompous 
 man, to whom the preceding remarks had been 
 addressed, "but I cannot desire the reform you so 
 ardently hope for. Think of the degradation of 
 being conquered by barbarians ! ^' 
 
 " I am the exile of my country's privileges ; 
 what interest have I in upholding her honour ? — if 
 honour she really has ! " replied the first speaker. 
 
 *' Nay ! Your expressions are too severe. You 
 are too discontented to be just." 
 
 " Am I ? Hear me for a moment, and you will 
 change your opinion. You see me now by my 
 bearing and appearance superior to yonder ple- 
 beian herd. You doubtless think that I live at 
 my ease in the world, that I can feel no anxiety 
 for the future about my bodily necessities. What 
 would you say were I to tell you that if I want 
 another meal, a lodging for to-night, a fresh robe 
 for to-morrow, I must rob or flatter some great 
 man to gain them. Yet so it is. I am hopeless, 
 
ANTONINA. Ill 
 
 friendless, destitute. In the whole of the empire 
 there is not an honest calling in which I can take 
 refuge. I must become a pander or a parasite, — 
 a hired tyrant over slaves, or a chartered groveller 
 beneath nobles, if I would not starve miserably in 
 the streets, or rob openly in the woods ! This is 
 what I am. Now listen to what I was. I was 
 born free. I inherited from my father a farm, 
 which he had successfully defended from the 
 encroachments of the rich, at the expense of his 
 comfort, his health, and his life. When I suc- 
 ceeded to his lands, I determined to protect them 
 in my time, as studiously as he had defended them 
 in his. I worked unintermittingly : I enlarged 
 my house, I improved my fields, I increased my 
 flocks. One after another, I despised the threats, 
 and defeated the wiles, of my noble neighbours, 
 who desired possession of my estate to swell their 
 own territorial grandeur. In process of time I 
 married, and had a child. I believed that I was 
 picked out from my race as a fortunate man, — 
 when one night I was attacked by robbers : slaves 
 made desperate by the cruelty of their wealthy 
 
112 ANTONINA. 
 
 masters. They ravaged my corn-fields, they de- 
 prived me of my flocks. When I demanded 
 redress, I was told to sell my lands to those who 
 could defend them, — to those rich nobles whose 
 tyranny had organised the band of wretches who 
 had spoiled me of my possessions, and to whose 
 fraud-gotten treasures the government were well 
 pleased to grant that protection which they had 
 denied to my honest hoards. In my pride I 
 determined that I would still be independent. I 
 planted new crops. With the little remnant of 
 my money I hired fresh servants, and bought 
 more flocks. I had just recovered from my first 
 disaster, when I became the victim of a second. 
 I was again attacked. This time we had arms, 
 and we attempted to defend ourselves. My wife 
 was slain before my eyes; my house was burnt to 
 the ground; I myself only escaped, mutilated 
 with wounds ; my child soon afterwards pined and 
 died. I had no wife, no offspring, no house, no 
 money. My fields still stretched round me, but 
 I had none to cultivate them. My walls still 
 tottered at my feet, but I had none to rear them 
 
ANTONINA. 113 
 
 again, none to inhabit them if they were reared. 
 My father's lands were now become a wilderness 
 to me. I was too proud to sell them to my rich 
 neighbour; I preferred to leave them before I 
 saw them the prey of a tyrant, whose rank had 
 triumphed over my industry, and who is now able 
 to boast that he can travel over ten leagues of 
 senatorial property, untainted by the propinquity 
 of a husbandman's farm. Houseless, homeless, 
 friendless, I have come to Rome alone in my 
 affliction, helpless in my degradation ! Do you 
 wonder now that I am careless about the honour 
 of my country ? I would have served her with my 
 life and my possessions when she was worthy of 
 my service, but she has cast me off, and I care not 
 who conquers her. I say to the Goths — with 
 thousands who suffer the same tribulation that 
 I now undergo — Enter our gates ! Level our 
 palaces to the ground ! Confound, if you will, in 
 one common slaughter, we that are victims, with 
 those that are tyrants ! Your invasion will bring 
 new lords to the land, — they cannot crush it more, 
 they may oppress it less. Our posterity may gain 
 
114 ANTONINA. 
 
 their rights by the sacrifice of lives that our 
 country has made worthless. Romans though we 
 are, we are ready to suffer and submit ! ' " 
 
 He stopped; for by this time he had lashed 
 himself into fury. His eyes glared, his cheeks 
 flushed, his voice rose. Could he then have seen the 
 faintest vision of the destiny that future ages had 
 in store for the posterity of the race that now suf- 
 fered throughout civilised Europe, hke him — could 
 he have imagined how, in after years, the " middle 
 class," despised in his day, was to rise to privilege 
 and power ; to hold in its just hands the balance 
 of the prosperity of nations ,• to crush oppression 
 and regulate rule ; to soar in its mighty flight 
 above thrones and principalities, and ranks and 
 riches, apparently obedient, but really com- 
 manding — could he but have foreboded this, what 
 a light must have burst upon his gloom, what a 
 hope must have soothed him in his despair ! 
 
 To what further extremities his anger might 
 have carried him, to what proceedings the indig- 
 nant Gordian, who still listened from his conceal- 
 ment, might have had recourse, it is difficult to 
 
ANTONINA. 115 
 
 say ; for the complaints of the ill-fated landholder 
 and the cogitations of the authoritative bailiff 
 were alike suddenly suspended, by an uproar 
 raging at this moment round a carriage which had 
 just emerged from the palace we have elsewhere 
 described. 
 
 This vehicle looked one mass of silver. Em- 
 broidered silk curtains fluttered from its windows, 
 gold ornaments studded its polished sides, and it 
 held no less a person than the nobleman who had 
 feasted the people with baskets of meat. This 
 fact had become known to the rabble before the 
 palace gates. Such an opportunity of showing 
 their exultation in their bondage, their real ser- 
 vility in their imaginary independence, was not 
 to be lost, and accordingly they let loose such a 
 torrent of clamorous gratitude on their enter- 
 tainer's appearance, that a stranger in Rome 
 would have thought the city in revolt. They 
 leapt, they ran, they danced round the prancing 
 horses, they flung their empty baskets into the 
 air, and patted approvingly their " fair round 
 bellies.^' From every side, as the carriage moved 
 
116 ANTONINA. 
 
 on, they gained fresh recruits and acquired new 
 importance. The timid fled before them, the 
 noisy shouted with them, the bold plunged into 
 their ranks, and the constant burden of their 
 rejoicing chorus was — " Health to the noble 
 Pomponius ! Prosperity to the senators of Rome, 
 who feast us with their food and give us the 
 freedom of their theatres ! Glory to Pomponius ! 
 Glory to the senators!" 
 
 Fate seemed on this day to take pleasure in 
 pampering the insatiable curiosity of Gordian, the 
 bailiff. The cries of the multitude had scarcely 
 died away in the distance, as they followed the 
 departing carriage, when the voices of two men, 
 pitched to a low, confidential tone, reached his 
 ear from the opposite side of the pillar. He 
 peeped cautiously round and saw that they were 
 priests. 
 
 " What an eternal jester is that Pomponius," 
 said one voice, " he is going to receive absolution, 
 and he journeys in his chariot of state, as if he 
 were preparing to celebrate his triumph, instead 
 of to confess his sins !" 
 
ANTONINA. 117 
 
 " Has he committed then a fresh imprudence T' 
 
 " Alas, yes ! For a senator he is dreadfully 
 wanting in caution ! A few days since in a fit of 
 passion, he flung a drinking cup at one of his 
 female slaves. The girl died on the spot, and her 
 brother, who is also in his service, threatened 
 immediate vengeance. To prevent disagreeable 
 consequences to his body^ Pomponius has sent 
 the fellow to his estates in Egypt ; and now, from 
 the same precaution for the welfare of his soid^ he 
 goes to demand absolution from our holy and 
 beneficent Church." 
 
 " I am afraid these incessant absolutions 
 granted to men who are too careless even to make 
 a show of repentance for their crimes, will preju- 
 dice us with the people at large." 
 
 " Of what consequence are the sentiments of the 
 people while we have their rulers on our side! 
 Absolution is the sorcery that binds these liber- 
 tines of Rome to our will. We know what con- 
 verted Constantino — politic flattery and ready 
 absolution ; the people will tell you it was the 
 sign of the Cross." 
 
118 ANTONINA. 
 
 "It is true this Pomponius is rich, and may 
 increase our revenues, but still, I fear the indig- 
 nation of the people." 
 
 " Fear nothing, think how long their old insti- 
 tutions imposed on them, and then doubt, if you 
 can, that we may shape them to our wishes as we 
 will. Any deceptions will be successful with a 
 mob, if the instrument employed to forward them 
 be a religion." 
 
 The voices ceased. Gordian, who still cherished 
 a vague intention of denouncing the fugitive land- 
 holder to the senatorial authorities, employed the 
 liberty afforded to his attention by the silence of 
 the priests in turning to look after his intended 
 victim. To his surprise he saw that the man had 
 left the auditors to whom he had before addressed 
 himself, and was engaged in earnest conversation, 
 in another part of the portico, with an individual 
 who seemed to have recently joined him, and 
 whose appearance was so remarkable that the 
 bailiff had moved a few steps forward to gain a 
 nearer view of him when he was once more 
 arrested by the voices of the priests. 
 
ANTONINA. 119 
 
 Irresolute for an instant to which party to 
 devote his unscrupulous attention, he returned 
 mechanically to his old position. Ere long, how- 
 ever, his anxiety to hear the mysterious communi- 
 cations proceeding between the landholder and his 
 friend overbalanced his delight in penetrating the 
 theological secrets of the priests. He turned once 
 more, but to his astonishment the objects of his 
 curiosity had disappeared. He stepped to the 
 outside of the portico and looked for them in 
 every direction, but they were nowhere to be seen. 
 Peevish and disappointed, he returned as a last 
 resource to the pillar where he had left the priests, 
 but the time consumed in his investigations after 
 one party had been fatal to his reunion with the 
 other. The churchmen were gone. 
 
 Sufficiently punished for his curiosity by his 
 disappointment, the bailiff walked doggedly off to- 
 wards the Pincian Hill. Had he turned in the 
 contrary direction, towards the Basilica of St. 
 Peter, he would have found himself once more 
 in the neighbourhood of the landholder and his 
 remarkable friend, and would have gained that 
 
120 ANTONINA. 
 
 acquaintance with the subjects of their conversa- 
 tion, which we intend that the reader shall acquire 
 in the course of the next chapter. 
 
 In the meantime our revelations are now at 
 an end, and the reader's attention is released 
 again to the story. But before we once more 
 address ourselves to its requirements, we would 
 again ask those interested in penetrating the in- 
 ternal causes of the catastrophe of Rome, to medi- 
 tate for an instant on the particles of evidence 
 which we have here collected for them. Let them 
 recal to their minds the concurrent disorgani- 
 sations forming the fierce social disease raging at 
 this period within the walls of the city, and ex- 
 tending its poisonous influences to the remotest 
 corners of the Empire. Let them in one glance 
 look back at the lower orders, ignorant, licentious, 
 brutalised, oppressed ; at the middle classes, out- 
 raged, persecuted, forsaken; at the aristocracy, 
 frivolous, irresponsible, unfeeling ; at the Churchy 
 which should have reformed the corruptions of 
 the State, ambitious, worldly, hypocritical; and 
 they will discover the real depth and extent of the 
 
ANTONINA. 121 
 
 universal disorganisation of Roman society in that 
 eventful age. Let them finally figure to them- 
 selves the effect produced by a nation like the 
 Goths, fresh in its vigorous youth, united in its 
 tremendous purpose, bursting at once upon a 
 people without a sympathy, a principle, an ambi- 
 tion, or a hope, round which they could universally 
 rally as a moral standard in the hour of need — let 
 them figure to themselves this, and they will be 
 little disposed to cavil at the probability of the 
 scenes through which they may be led in the future 
 portions of this work ; they will feel little aston- 
 ishment that civilised Rome should have closed 
 her dazzling career by prostration before an army 
 of Goths.* 
 
 * Vide note, in Appendix — " The population of Rome." 
 
 VOL I. 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 THE CHURCH. 
 
 In the year 324, on the locality assigned by 
 rumour to the martyrdom of St. Peter, and over 
 the ruins of the Circus of Nero, Constantino 
 erected the church called the Basilica of St. Peter. 
 
 For twelve centuries, this building, raised by a 
 man infamous for his murders and his tyrannies, 
 stood uninjured amid the shocks which during 
 that long period devastated the rest of the city. 
 After that time it was removed, tottering to its 
 base from its own reverend and illustrious age, by 
 Pope Julius II., to make way for the foundations 
 of the modern church. 
 
 It is towards this structure of twelve hundred 
 years duration, erected by hands stained with 
 blood, and yet preserved as a star of peace in the 
 
ANTONINA. 123 
 
 midst of stormy centuries of war^ that we would 
 direct the reader s attention. What art has done 
 for the modern church, time has effected for the 
 ancient. If the one is majestic to the eye by its 
 grandeur, the other is hallowed to the memory 
 by its age. 
 
 As this church by its rise commemorated the 
 triumphant establishment of Christianity as the 
 religion of Rome, so in its progress it reflected 
 every change wrought in the spirit of the new 
 worship by the ambition, the prodigality, or the 
 frivolity of the priests. At first, it stood awful 
 and imposing, beautiful in all its parts as the 
 religion for whose glory it was built. Vast por- 
 phyry colonnades decorated its approaches, and 
 surrounded a fountain whose waters issued from 
 the representation of a gigantic pine tree in 
 bronze. Its double rows of aisles, were each sup- 
 ported by forty-eight columns of precious marble. 
 Its flat ceiling was adorned with beams of gilt 
 metal, rescued from the pollution of heathen 
 temples. Its walls were decorated with large 
 
 paintings of religious subjects, and its tribunal 
 
 g2 
 
124 ANTONINA. 
 
 was studded with elegant mosaics. Thus it rose, 
 simple and yet sublime, awful and yet alluring ; 
 in this its beginning, a type of the dawn of the 
 worship which it was elevated to represent. But 
 when flushed with success, the priests seized on 
 Christianity as their path to politics and their 
 introduction to power, the aspect of the Church 
 gradually began to change. As, slowly and insen- 
 sibly, ambitious man heaped the garbage of his 
 mysteries, his doctrines, and his disputes, about 
 the pristine purity of the structure given him by 
 God, so one by one, gaudy adornments and mere- 
 tricious alterations arose to sully the majestic 
 Basilica, until the threatening and reproving appa- 
 rition of the pagan Julian, when both Church and 
 churchmen received in their corrupt progress a 
 sudden and impressive check. 
 
 The short period of the revival of idolatry once 
 passed over, the priests, unmoved by the warning 
 they had received, returned with renewed vigour 
 to confuse that which both in their Gospel and 
 their Church had been once simple. Day by day 
 they put forth fresh treatises, aroused fierce 
 
ANTONINA. 125 
 
 controversies, subsided into new sects ; and, day 
 by day, they altered more and more the once noble 
 aspect of the ancient Basihca. They hung their 
 nauseous relics on its mighty walls, they stuck 
 their tiny tapers about its glorious pillars, they 
 wreathed their tawdry fringes around its massive 
 altars. Here they polished, there they em- 
 broidered. Wherever there was a window, they 
 curtained it with gaudy cloths; wherever there 
 was a statue, they bedizened it with artificial 
 flowers ; wherever there was a solemn recess, 
 they outraged its religious gloom with intruding 
 light ; until (arriving at the period we write of) 
 they succeeded so completely in changing the 
 aspect of the building that it looked, within, 
 more like a vast Pagan toy-shop than a Christian 
 church. Here and there, it is true, a pillar or an 
 altar rose unencumbered as of old, appearing as 
 much at variance with the frippery that surrounded 
 it, as a text of Scripture quoted in a sermon of the 
 time. But as regarded the general aspect of the 
 Basilica, the decent glories of its earlier days 
 seemed irrevocably departed and destroyed. 
 
126 ANTONINA. 
 
 After what has been said of the edifice, the 
 reader will have little difficulty in imagining that 
 the square in which it stood lost whatever eleva- 
 tion of character it might once have possessed, 
 with even greater rapidity than the church itself. 
 If the cathedral now looked like an immense toy- 
 shop, assuredly its attendant colonnades had the 
 appearance of the booths of an enormous fair. 
 
 The day, whose decline we have hinted at in 
 the preceding Chapter, was fast verging towards 
 its close, as the inhabitants of the streets on the 
 western bank of the Tiber prepared to join the 
 crowds that they beheld passing by their windows, 
 in the direction of the Basilica of St. Peter. The 
 cause of this sudden confluence of the popular 
 current in one common direction, was made suf- 
 ficiently apparent to all inquirers who happened 
 to be near a church or a public building, by the 
 appearance in such situations of a large sheet of 
 vellum elaborately illuminated, raised on a high 
 pole, and guarded from contact with the inquisitive 
 rabble by two armed soldiers. The announce- 
 ments set forth in these strange placards were all 
 
ANTONINA. 127 
 
 of the same nature and directed to the same end. 
 In each of them the Bishop of Rome informed his 
 " pious and honourable brethren," the inhabitants 
 of the city, that as the next day was the anniver- 
 sary of the Martyrdom of St. Luke, the vigil would 
 necessarily be held on that evening in the Basilica 
 of St. Peter; and that in consideration of the 
 importance of the occasion, there would be ex- 
 hibited, before the commencement of the cere- 
 mony, those precious relics connected with the 
 death of the saint which had become the inesti- 
 mable inheritance of the Church, and which con- 
 sisted of a branch of the olive tree to which 
 St. Luke was hung, a piece of the noose — including 
 the knot — which had been passed round his neck, 
 and a picture of the Apotheosis of the Virgin 
 painted by his own hand. After some sentences 
 expressive of lamentation for the sufferings of the 
 saint, which nobody read and which it is unneces- 
 sury to reproduce here, the proclamation went on 
 to state that a sermon would be preached in the 
 course of the vigil, and that at a later hour the great 
 chandelier, containing two thousand four hundred 
 
128 ^NTONINA. 
 
 lamps, would be lit to illuminate the church. 
 Finally, the worthy bishop called upon all members 
 of his flock, in consideration of the solemnity 
 of the day, to abstain from sensual pleasures, in 
 order that they might the more piously and 
 worthily contemplate the sacred objects submitted 
 to their view, and digest the spiritual nourish- 
 ment to be offered to their understandings. 
 
 From the specimen we have already given of the 
 character of the populace of Rome, it will perhaps 
 be unnecessary to say that the great attractions 
 presented by this theological bill of fare were the 
 relics and the chandelier. Pulpit eloquence and 
 vigil solemnities alone, must have long exhibited 
 their more sober allurements, before they could 
 have drawn into the streets a fiftieth part of the 
 immense crowd that now hurried towards the 
 desecrated Basilica. Indeed, so vast was the 
 assemblage soon congregated, that the advanced 
 ranks of sight-seers had already filled the church 
 to overflowing, before those in the rear had come 
 within view of the colonnades. 
 
 However dissatisfied the unsuccessful portion of 
 
ANTONINA, 129 
 
 the citizens might feel at their exclusion from the 
 church, they found a powerful counter-attraction 
 in the amusements going forward in the Place, the 
 occupants of which seemed thoroughly regardless 
 of the bishop's admonitions upon the sobriety of 
 behaviour due to the solemnity of the day. As if 
 in utter defiance of the decency and order recom- 
 mended by the clergy, popular exhibitions of all 
 sorts were set up on the broad flagstones of the 
 great space before the church. Street dancing- 
 girls exercised at every available spot those " glid- 
 ing gyrations," so eloquently condemned by the 
 worthy Ammianus Marcellinus of orderly and his- 
 torical memory. Booths crammed with relics of 
 doubtful authenticity ; baskets filled with neat 
 manuscript abstracts of furiously controversial 
 pamphlets ; Pagan images regenerated into por- 
 traits of saints; pictorial representations of Arians 
 writhing in damnation and mart}Ts basking in 
 halos of celestial light, tempted, in every direction, 
 the more pious among the spectators. Cooks per- 
 ambulated with their shops on their backs ; rival 
 slave-merchants shouted petitions for patronage ; 
 
 g3 
 
130 ANTONINA. 
 
 wane-sellers taught Bacchanalian philosophy from 
 the tops of their casks; poets recited composi- 
 tions for sale ; sophisters held arguments des- 
 tined to convert the wavering, and perplex the 
 ignorant. Incessant motion and incessant noise 
 seemed to be the sole compensations sought by 
 the multitude for the disappointment of exclusion 
 from the church. If a stranger, after reading the 
 proclamation of the day, had proceeded to the 
 Basilica, to feast his eyes on the contemplation of 
 the illustrious aggregate of humanity, entitled by 
 the bishop " his pious and honourable brethren/' 
 he must — on mixing at this moment with the 
 assemblage — have either doubted the truth of the 
 episcopal appellation, or have given the citizens 
 credit for that refinement of intrinsic worth which 
 is of too elevated a nature to influence the charac- 
 ter of the outward man. 
 
 At the time when the sun set, nothing could be 
 more picturesque than the distant view of this 
 joyous scene. The deep red rays of the departing 
 luminary cast their radiance, partly from behind 
 the church, over the vast multitude in the Place. 
 
ANTONINA. 131 
 
 Brightly and rapidly that rich light roved over 
 the waters that leaped towards it from the 
 fountain in all the loveliness of natural and 
 evanescent form. Bathed in that brilliant glow, 
 the smooth porphjry colonnades reflected cha- 
 meleon-like ethereal and varying hues ; the white 
 marble statues became suff'used in a delicate rose- 
 colour, and the sober-tinted trees gleamed in 
 the innermost of their leafy depths as if steeped 
 in the exhalations of a golden mist. While, 
 contrasting strangely with the wondrous radiance 
 around them, the huge bronze pine-tree in the 
 middle of the Place, and the wide front of the 
 Basilica, rose up in gloomy shadow, indefinite and 
 exaggerated, lowering like evil spirits over the 
 joyous beauty of the rest of the scene, and casting 
 their great depths of shade into the very midst 
 of the light whose dominion they despised. 
 Beheld from a distance, this wild combination of 
 vivid brightness and solemn gloom; these build- 
 ings, at one place darkened till they looked 
 gigantic, at another lightened till they appeared 
 ethereal ; these crowded groups, seeming one great 
 
132 ANTONINA. 
 
 moving mass gleaming at this point in radiant 
 light, obscured at that in thick shadow, made 
 up a whole so incongruous and yet so beautiful, 
 so grotesque and yet so sublime, that the scene 
 looked for the moment, more like some inhabited 
 meteor, half ecHpsed by its propinquity to earth, 
 than a mortal and material prospect. 
 
 The beauties of this atmospheric effect were of 
 far too serious and sublime a nature to interest 
 the multitude in the Place. Out of the whole 
 assemblage, but two men watched that glorious 
 sunset with even an appearance of the admiration 
 and attention which it deserved. One was the 
 landholder whose wrongs were related in the 
 preceding chapter — the other his remarkable 
 friend. 
 
 These two men formed a singular contrast to 
 each other, both in demeanour and appearance, 
 as they gazed forth upon the crimson heaven. 
 The landholder was an undersized restless-looking 
 man, whose features, naturally sharp, were now 
 distorted by a fixed expression of misery and dis- 
 content. His quick penetrating glance wandered 
 
ANTONINA. 133 
 
 incessantly from place to place, perceiving all 
 things, but resting on none. In his attention to 
 the scene before him, he appeared to have been 
 led more by the influence of example than by his 
 own spontaneous feelings ; for ever and anon, he 
 looked impatiently round upon his friend as if 
 expecting him to speak — but no word or move- 
 ment escaped his thoughtful companion. Occupied 
 exclusively in his own contemplations, he appeared 
 wholly insensible to any ordinary outward appeal. 
 In age and appearance, this individual was in 
 the decline of life, for he had numbered sixty 
 years, his hair was completely gray, and his face 
 was covered with deep wrinkles. Yet, in spite of 
 these disadvantages, he was in the highest sense 
 of the word a handsome man. Though worn and 
 thin, his features were still bold and regular, and 
 there was an elevation about the habitual mourn- 
 fulness of his expression, and an intelligence about 
 his somewhat severe and earnest eyes, that bore 
 eloquent testimony to the superiority of his 
 intellectual powers. As he now stood gazing 
 fixedly out into the glowing sky, his tall meagre 
 
134 ANTONINA. 
 
 figure half supported upon his staff, his lips firmly 
 compressed, his brow slightly frowning, and his 
 attitude firm and motionless ; the most superficial 
 observer must have felt immediately that he 
 looked on no ordinary being. The history of a 
 life of deep thought — perhaps of long sorrow — 
 seemed written in every lineament of his meditative 
 conntenance ; and there was a natural dignity in 
 his manner, which evidently restrained his restless 
 companion from offering any determined inter- 
 ruption to the course of his reflections. 
 
 Slowly and gorgeously the sun had continued to 
 wane in the horizon, until he was now lost to view. 
 As his last rays sunk behind the distant hills, the 
 stranger started from his reverie and approached 
 the landholder, pointing with his staff towards 
 the fast-fading brightness of the western sky. 
 
 " Probus," said he, in a low melancholy voice, 
 "as I looked on that sunset, I thought on the 
 condition of the Church." 
 
 " I see little in the Church to think of, or in the 
 sunset to observe," replied his companion. 
 
 *' How pure, how vivid ," murmured the other, 
 
ANTONINA. 135 
 
 scarcely heeding the landholder's remark, " was 
 the light which that sun cast upon this earth at 
 our feet I How nobly for a time its brightness 
 triumphed over the shadows around ; and yet, in 
 spite of the promise of that radiance, how swiftly 
 did it fade ere long in its conflict with the gloom 
 — ^how thoroughly, even now, has it departed from 
 the earth, and withdrawn the beauty of its glory 
 from the heaven ! Already the shadows are 
 lengthening around us, and shrouding in their 
 darkness every object in the Place. But a short 
 hour hence, and — should no moon arise — the gloom 
 of night will stretch unresisted over Rome !'' 
 " To what purpose do you tell me this V 
 " Are you not reminded by what we have 
 observed, of the course of the worship which it is 
 our privilege to profess ? Does not that first 
 beautiful light denote its pure and perfect rise ; 
 that short conflict between the radiance and the 
 gloom, its successful preservation, by the Apostles 
 and the Fathers ; that rapid fading of the radiance, 
 its desecration in later times ; and the gloom 
 which now surrounds us, the destruction which 
 
136 ANTONINA. 
 
 has encompassed it in this age we live in ? — A 
 destruction which nothing can avert but a return 
 to that pure first faith that should now be the hope 
 of our religion, as the moon is the hope of night!'' 
 
 " How should we reform ? Do people who have 
 no liberties care about a religion? Who is to 
 teach them ?" 
 
 " I have — I will. It is the purpose of my life 
 to restore to them the holiness of the ancient 
 Church ; to rescue them from the snares of traitors 
 to the faith, whom men call priests. They shall 
 learn through me that the Church knew no adorn- 
 ment once, but the presence of the pure ; that the 
 priest craved no finer vestment than his holiness ; 
 that the Gospel, which once taught humility and 
 now raises dispute, was in former days the rule of 
 faith — sufficient for all wants, powerful over all 
 difficulties. Through me they shall know that in 
 times past it was the guardian of the heart ; 
 through me they shall see that in times present it 
 is the plaything of the proud ; through me they 
 shall fear that in times future it may become the 
 exile of the Church ! To this task I have vowed 
 
ANTONINA. 137 
 
 myself; to overthrow this idolatry — which, like 
 another Paganism, rises among us with its images, 
 its relics, its jewels, and its gold — I will devote my 
 child, my life, my energies, and my possessions. 
 From this attempt I will never turn aside — from 
 this determination I will never flinch. While I 
 have a breath of life in me, I will persevere in 
 restoring to this abandoned city the true worship 
 of the Most High!" 
 
 He ceased abruptly. The intensity of his agita- 
 tion seemed suddenly to deny to him the faculty 
 of speech. Every muscle in the frame of that 
 stern, melancholy man quivered at the immortal 
 promptings of the soul within him. There was 
 something almost feminine in his universal sus- 
 ceptibility to the influence of one solitary emotion. 
 Even the rough, desperate landholder felt awed 
 by the enthusiasm of the being before him ; and 
 forgot his wrongs, terrible as they were, — and his 
 misery, poignant as it was, — as he gazed upon his 
 companion's face. 
 
 For some minutes neither of the men said 
 more. Soon, however, the last speaker calmed his 
 
138 ANTONINA. 
 
 agitation, with the facility of a man accustomed 
 to stifle the emotions that he cannot crush, and 
 advancing to the landholder, took him sorrowfully 
 by the hand. 
 
 " I see, Probus, that I have amazed you," said 
 he, " but the Church is the only subject on which 
 I have no discretion. In all other matters I have 
 conquered the rashness of my early manhood ; in 
 this I have to wrestle with my hastier nature still. 
 When I look on the mockeries that are acting 
 around us ; when I behold a priesthood deceivers, 
 a people deluded, a religion defiled, then, I confess 
 it, my indignation overpowers my patience, and 
 I burn to destroy, where I ought only to hope 
 to reform."" 
 
 " I knew you always violent of imagination ; but 
 when I last saw you, your enthusiasm was love. 
 Your wife " 
 
 " Peace ! She deceived me ! " 
 
 " Your child " 
 
 " Lives with me at Rome." 
 
 " I remember her an infant, when, fourteen 
 years since, I was your neighbour in Gaul. On 
 
ANTONINA. 139 
 
 my departure from the province, you had just 
 returned from a journey into Italy, unsuccessful in 
 your attempts to discover there a trace either of 
 your parents, or of that elder brother, whose 
 absence from you you were wont so continually to 
 lament. Tell me, have you, since that period, dis- 
 covered the members of your ancient household ? 
 Hitherto you have been so occupied in listen- 
 ing to the history of my wrongs, that you have 
 scarcely spoken of the changes in your life since 
 we last met." 
 
 " If, Probus, I have been silent to you concern- 
 ing myself, it is because for me retrospection has 
 little that attracts. While yet it was in my power 
 to return to those parents whom I deserted in my 
 boyhood, I thought not of repentance ; and now, 
 that they must be but too surely lost to me, my 
 yearning towards them is of no avail. Of my 
 brother, from whom I parted in a moment of 
 childish jealousy and anger, and whose pardon and 
 love I would give up even my ambition to acquire, 
 I have never yet discovered a trace. Atone- 
 ment to those whom I injured in early life is a 
 
140 ANTONINA. 
 
 privilege denied to the prayers of my age. From 
 my parents and my brother I departed unblest, 
 and unforgiven by them I feel that I am doomed 
 to die ! My life has been careless, useless, god- 
 less, passing from rapine and violence to luxury 
 and indolence, and leading me to the marriage 
 which I exulted in when I last saw you, but which 
 I now feel was unworthy, alike in its motives and 
 its results. But blessed and thrice blessed be that 
 last calamity of my wicked existence, for it opened 
 my eyes to the truth, — it made a Christian of me 
 while I was yet alive ! It was then, Probus, when 
 I found myself deserted and dishonoured, left 
 alone to be the guardian of my helpless child, 
 exiled for ever from a home that I had myself 
 forsaken, that I repented me in earnest of my 
 misdeeds, that I sought wisdom from the book of 
 salvation, and the conduct of life from the fathers 
 of the Church. It was at that time that I deter- 
 mined to devote my child, like Samuel of old, to 
 the service of heaven, and myself to the reforma- 
 tion of our degraded worship. As I have already 
 told you, I forsook my abode and changed my 
 
ANTONINA. 141 
 
 name, (remember it is as ' Numerian ' that you 
 must henceforth address me), that of my former 
 self no remains might be left, that of my former 
 companions not one might ever discover and tempt 
 me again. With incessant care have I shielded 
 my daughter from the contamination of the world. 
 As a precious jewel in a miser's hands she has 
 been watched and guarded in her father's house. 
 Her destiny is to soothe the afflicted, to watch 
 the sick, to succour the forlorn, when I, her 
 teacher, have restored to the land the dominion of 
 its ancient faith, and the guidance of its faultless 
 Gospel. We have neither of us an affection, or a 
 hope that can bind us to the things of earth. Our 
 hearts look both towards heaven ; our expecta- 
 tions are only from on high ! " 
 
 " Do not set your hopes too firmly on your 
 child. Remember how the nobles of Rome have 
 destroyed the household I once had, and tremble 
 for your own.'"* 
 
 " I have no fear for my daughter ; she is cared 
 for in my absence by one who is vowed tt) aid me 
 in my labours for the Church. It is now nearly a 
 
142 ANTONINA. 
 
 year since I first met Ulpius, and from that time 
 forth he has devoted himself to my service and 
 watched over my child." 
 
 " Who is this Ulpius, that you should put such 
 faith in him?" 
 
 " He is a man of age like mine. I found him, 
 like me, worn down by the calamities of his early 
 life, and abandoned, as I had once been, to the 
 delusions of the Pagan gods. He was desolate, 
 suffering, forlorn, and I had pity on him in his 
 misery. I proved to him that the worship he still 
 professed was banished for its iniquities from the 
 land ; that the religion which had succeeded it had 
 become defiled by man, and that there remained 
 but one faith for him to choose, if he would be 
 saved — the faith of the early Church. He heard 
 me and was converted. From that moment he 
 has served me patiently and helped me willingly. 
 Under the roof where I assemble the few who as 
 yet are true believers, he is always the first to come 
 and the last to remain. No word of anger has 
 ever crossed his lips ; no look of impatience has 
 ever appeared in his eyes. Though sorrowful he 
 
 / 
 
ANTONINA. 143 
 
 is gentle ; though suffering he is industrious. I 
 have trusted him with all I possess, and I glory 
 in my credulity ! Ulpius is incorruptible ! " 
 
 *' And your daughter 1 — is Ulpius reverenced by 
 her, as he is respected by you V* 
 
 '' She knows that her duty is to love whom I 
 love, and to avoid whom I avoid. Can you 
 imagine that a Christian virgin has any feelings 
 disobedient to her father's wishes I Come to my 
 house ; judge with your own eyes of my daughter 
 and my companion. You, whose misfortunes have 
 left you no home, shall find one, if you will, with 
 me. Come then and labour with me in my great 
 undertaking ! You will withdraw your mind from 
 the contemplation of your woes, and merit by 
 your devotion the favour of theMost High." 
 
 " No, Numerian, I will still be independent, 
 even of my friends ! Nor Rome, nor Italy are 
 abiding-places for me. I go to another land to 
 abide among another people, until the arms of a 
 conqueror shall have restored freedom to the 
 brave and protection to the honest, throughout 
 the countries of the empire." 
 
144 ANTONINA. 
 
 " Probus, I implore you stay ! " 
 
 " Never ! My determination is taken, Nume- 
 rian, farewell ! " 
 
 And the landholder hurried rapidly away, as if 
 fearful to trust his resolution any longer against 
 the persuasions of his friend. 
 
 For a few minutes, Numerian stood motionless, 
 gazing wistfully in the direction taken by his com- 
 panion on his departure. At first, an expression 
 of grief and pity softened the austerity which 
 seemed the habitual characteristic of his coun- 
 tenance when in repose, but soon these milder and 
 tenderer feelings appeared to vanish from his heart 
 as suddenly as they had arisen ; his features 
 re-assumed their customary sternness, and he 
 muttered to himself as he mixed with the crowd 
 struggling onwards in the direction of the Basi- 
 lica — " Let him depart unregretted, he has denied 
 himself to the service of his Maker. He should no 
 longer be my friend.'" 
 
 In this sentence lay the index to the character 
 of the man. His existence was one vast sacrifice, 
 one scene of intrepid self-immolation. Although, 
 
ANTONINA. U5 
 
 in the brief hints at the events of his Hfe which he 
 had communicated to his friend, he had exag- 
 gerated the extent of his errors, he had by no 
 means done justice to the fervour of his penitence, 
 a penitence which outstripped the usual boun- 
 daries of repentance, and only began in despair to 
 terminate in fanaticism. His desertion of his 
 father's house, (into the motives of which it is 
 not our present intention to enter) and his long 
 subsequent existence of violence and excess, indis- 
 posed his naturally strong passions to submit to 
 the slightest restraint. In obedience to their 
 first impulses, he contracted at a mature age a 
 marriage with a woman thoroughly unworthy 
 of the ardent admiration that she had inspired. 
 When he found himself deceived and dishonoured 
 by her, the shock of such an affliction thrilled 
 through his whole being — crushed all his ener- 
 gies — struck him prostrate, heart and mind, 
 at one blow. The errors of his youth, com- 
 mitted in his prosperity with moral impunity, re- 
 acted upon him in his adversity with an influence 
 fatal to his future peace. His repentance was 
 
146 ANTONTNA. 
 
 darkened by despondency ; his resolutions were 
 unbriglitened by hope. He flew to religion as 
 the suicide flies to the knife — in despair. All 
 that he discerned of encouragement in the doctrines 
 of the priests, or the practice of the church, he 
 condemned as the delusive self-flatteries of human 
 imperfection and arrogance. Period by period he 
 traced back the history of his worship — searching 
 for severity as other men search for commiseration 
 — until he paused at the Christianity of the early 
 days of the Church. In the stoical practice and 
 ungenial theory of the ancient believers, he found 
 a system which sympathised with his new convic- 
 tions. Day after day he searched anxiously among 
 the records left by the most austere of the primi- 
 tive fathers, until the constant perusal of their 
 pitiless doctrines led him at length to believe that 
 the very existence within him of the social emo- 
 tions was in itself a sin. By those emotions he 
 recollected that he had been misled in his youth ; 
 and while one of them remained to influence him 
 in his manhood, he believed that his salvation was 
 in danger, and his repentance insincere. Spurred 
 
ANTONIXA. 147 
 
 by his active intellect to forsake the gloomy tran- 
 quillity that he would fain have imposed on himself, 
 and to acquire some object in existence to which 
 he could devote his heart as to a passion, he 
 selected as the noblest and purest employment 
 that he could undertake, the reformation of a 
 degraded Church. This design once conceived, it 
 was a part both of his temperament and his prin- 
 ciples to deliver himself up unreservedly to its 
 furtherance. Any affection, however innocent in 
 itself, that arose within him unconnected with his 
 great object, he condemned as a relic of his former 
 nature, and crushed — at what expense of anguish 
 none can tell — as betraying a possibility of moral 
 relapse. Layman though he was, he hesitated 
 not an instant in obtainino^ a buildincj; which he 
 could use as a church, and seeking for adherents 
 whom he might teach as a congregation. At every 
 appearance of progress that he imagined he could 
 discern in the course of his perilous labours, he 
 experienced a wild and secret delight which 
 elevated him for the time above all earthly sympa- 
 thies and considerations. He hoped when others 
 
 h2 
 
148 ANTONINA. 
 
 would have despaired ; he worked when others 
 would have fainted. To such a height rose his 
 enthusiasm for his cause, that it blunted his worldly 
 perceptions, rendering him impervious to insult, 
 defenceless against imposition, and insensible to 
 danger, when they encountered him in the prose- 
 cution of his designs. He schooled himself to 
 look on his daughter only as a model to be exhi- 
 bited in proof of the possibility of training others 
 for the promotion of his great plan. He saw in 
 his property and his influence but the means of 
 compassing one sole end. In short, to express it 
 in his own words to Probus the landholder, he 
 had indeed devoted to his undertaking " his life, 
 his child, his energies, and his possessions." * 
 
 Leaving all remaining peculiarities in Numerian's 
 character to be discussed at a future opportunity, 
 we will now follow him in his passage through the 
 crowd, to the entrance of the Basilica — continuing 
 to designate him, here and elsewhere, by the name 
 
 * If the reader doubts the probabiUty of an attempted refor- 
 mation of the Roman Church in the 5th century, let him refer to 
 Gibbon, chapter 28, note 174 ; and to the controversy between 
 Jerome and Vigilantius, " the Protestant of his age." 
 
ANTONINA. 149 
 
 which he had assumed on his conversion, and by 
 which he had insisted on being addressed during 
 his interview with the fugitive landholder. 
 
 Although at the commencement of his progress 
 towards the church, our enthusiast found himself 
 placed among the hindermost of the members 
 of the advancing throng, he soon contrived so 
 thoroughly to outstrip his dilatory and discursive 
 neighbours as to gain, with little delay, the steps 
 of the sacred building. Here, in common with 
 many others, he was compelled to stop, while 
 those nearest the Basilica squeezed their way 
 through its stately doors. In such a situation his 
 remarkable figure could not fail to be noticed, and 
 he was silently recognised by many of the by- 
 standers — some of whom looked on him with 
 wonder, and some with aversion. Nobody, how- 
 ever, approached or spoke to him. Every one felt 
 the necessity of shunning a man whose bold and 
 daily exposures of the abuses of the Church placed 
 in incessant peril his liberty, and even his life. 
 
 Among the bystanders who surrounded 
 Numerian, there were nevertheless two who did 
 
150 ANTONINA. 
 
 not remain content with carelessly avoiding any 
 communication with the intrepid and suspected 
 Reformer. These two men belonged to the lowest 
 order of the clergy, and appeared to be occupied 
 in cautiously watching the actions and listening to 
 the conversation of the individuals immediately 
 around them. The instant they beheld Numerian, 
 they moved so as to elude his observation, taking 
 care at the same time to occupy such a position as 
 enabled them to keep in view the object of their 
 evident distrust. 
 
 " Look, Osius," said one, " that man is here 
 again ! " 
 
 " And doubtless with the same motives which 
 brought him here yesterday," replied the other. 
 '• You will see that he will again enter the church, 
 listen to the service, retire to his little chapel near 
 the Pincian Mount, and there attack the doctrines 
 which our brethren have preached, before his 
 ragged mob of adherents, as we know he did last 
 night, and as we suspect he will continue to do, 
 until the authorities think proper to give the 
 signal for his imprisonment." 
 
ANTONINA. 151 
 
 " I marvel that he should have been permitted 
 to persist so long a time as he has in his course of 
 contumacy towards the Church. Have we not 
 evidence enough in his writings alone to convict 
 him of heresy? The carelessness of the Bishop 
 upon such a matter as this is quite inexplicable !'' 
 
 " You should consider, Numerian not being a 
 priest, that the carelessness about our interests 
 lies more with the Senate than the Bishop. What 
 time our nobles can spare from their debaucheries, 
 has been lately given to discussions on the conduct 
 of the Emperor in retiring to Ravenna, and will 
 now be dedicated to penetrating the basis of this 
 rumour about the Goths. Besides, even were 
 they at liberty, what care the Senate about theo- 
 logical disputes ? They only know this Numerian 
 as a citizen of Rome, a man of some influence and 
 possessions, and, consequently, a person of political 
 importance as a member of the population. In 
 addition to which it would be no easy task for us, 
 at the present moment, to impugn the doctrines 
 broached by our assailant ; for the fellow has a 
 troublesome facility of supporting what he says 
 
152 ANTONINA. 
 
 by the Bible. Believe me, in this matter, our 
 only way of righting ourselves will be to convict 
 him of scandal against the highest dignitaries of 
 the Church." 
 
 "The order that we have lately received to 
 track his movements and listen to his discourses, 
 leads me to believe that our superiors are of your 
 opinion." 
 
 " Whether my convictions are correct or not, 
 of this I feel assured — that his days of liberty are 
 numbered. It was but a few hours ago that I saw 
 the Bishop's-chamberlain's head-assistant, and he 
 told me that he had heard, through the crevice 
 of a door " 
 
 " Hush ! he moves ; he is pressing forward to 
 enter the church. You can tell me what you 
 were about to say as we follow him. Quick ! let 
 us mix with the crowd.'' 
 
 Ever enthusiastic in the performance of their 
 loathsome duties, these two discreet pastors of a 
 Christian flock followed Numerian with the most 
 elaborate caution into the interior of the sacred 
 building. 
 
ANTONINA. 153 
 
 Although the sun still left a faint streak of red 
 in the western sky, and the moon had as yet 
 scarcely risen, the great chandelier of two thousand 
 four hundred lamps, mentioned by the Bishop in 
 his address to the people, was already alight. In 
 the days of its severe and sacred beauty, the 
 appearance of the church would have suffered 
 fatally by this blaze of artificial brilliancy ; but 
 now that the ancient character of the Basilica was 
 completely changed, now that from a solemn 
 temple it had been altered to the semblance of a 
 luxurious palace, it gained immensely by its gaudy 
 illumination. Not an ornament alons: the vast 
 extent of its glorious nave, but glittered in vivid 
 distinctness in the dazzling light that poured 
 downwards from the roof. The gilded rafters, 
 the smooth inlaid marble pillars, the rich hangings 
 of the windows, the jewelled candlesticks on tlie 
 altars, the pictures, the statues, the bronzes, the 
 mosaics, each and all glowed with a steady and 
 luxurious transparency, absolutely intoxicating to 
 the eye. Not a trace of wear, not a vestige of 
 tarnish now appeared on any object. Each 
 
154 ANTONINA. 
 
 portion of the nave to which the attention was 
 directed, appeared too finely, spotlessly radiant, 
 ever to have been touched by mortal hands. En- 
 tranced and bewildered, the observation roamed 
 over the surface of the brilliant scene, until 
 wearied by the unbroken embellishment of the 
 prospect, it wandered for repose to the dimly- 
 lighted aisles, and dwelt with delight upon the 
 soft shadows that hovered about their distant 
 pillars, and the gliding forms that peopled their 
 dusky recesses, or loitered past their lofty walls. 
 
 At the moment when Numerian entered the 
 Basilica, a part of the service had just concluded. 
 The last faint echo from the voices of the choir 
 still hung upon the incense-laden air, and the vast 
 masses of the spectators were still grouped in their 
 listening and various attitudes, as the devoted 
 reformer looked forth upon the church. Even he, 
 stern as he was, seemed for a moment subdued by 
 the ineffable enchantment of the scene; but ere 
 long, as if displeased with his own involuntary 
 emotions of admiration, his brow contracted, and 
 he sighed heavily, as (still followed by the atten- 
 
ANTONINA. 155 
 
 live spies) he sought the comparative seclusion 
 of the aisles. 
 
 Durinor the interval between the divisions of 
 the service, the congregation occupied themselves 
 in staring at the rehcs, which were inclosed in a 
 silver cabinet with crystal doors, and placed on 
 the top of the high altar. Although it was impos- 
 sible to obtain a satisfactory view of these ecclesi- 
 astical treasures, they nevertheless employed the 
 attention of every one, until the appearance of a 
 priest in the pulpit gave signal of the commence- 
 ment of the sermon, and admonished all those 
 who had seats to secure them without delay. 
 
 To attempt any elaborate analysis of the dis- 
 course spoken on this occasion by the preacher, 
 would be to occupy the reader's time very little to 
 his moral or literary advantage. Suffice it to say 
 — ere we proceed to more important matters — 
 that the sermon was prodigiously long; that it 
 was delivered with theatrical vehemence of action, 
 in a gloomy monotony of tone ; and that its sub- 
 ject — the martyrdom of St. Luke — served as the 
 foundation on which the zealous preacher erected 
 
156 ANTONINA. 
 
 the imposing superstructure of a philippic against 
 the Arians. He began by assuming it as just 
 possible that there might have been Arians in the 
 time of St. Luke, continued (reasoning upon his 
 supposition as if it had been a certainty) by 
 expressing his firm conviction that Arians were 
 the murderers of the Evangelist, and concluded — 
 taking the unfortunate Arians as a starting point 
 — by delivering over to unmitigated damnation, in 
 a regular and orderly succession, all nations, reli- 
 gions, sects, and individuals, not prepared to 
 recognise the infallibihty of the Bishop of Rome, 
 and the authenticity of the collection of relics in 
 the Basilica of St. Peter. 
 
 Passing through the ranks of the auditors of 
 this discourse — some of whom were engaged in 
 counting the lights in the chandelier, to be certain 
 that the bishop had not defrauded them of one 
 out of the two thousand four hundred lamps ; 
 others in holding whispered conversations, and 
 opening small boxes of sweetmeats — we again 
 conduct the reader to the outside of the church. 
 
 The assemblage here had by this time much 
 
ANTONINA. 157 
 
 diminished ; the shadows flung over the ground 
 by the lofty colonnades had deepened and in- 
 creased ; and in many of the more remote recesses 
 of the Place hardly a human being was to be 
 observed. At one of these extremities, where the 
 pillars terminated in the street and the obscurity 
 was most intense, stood a solitary old man keep- 
 ing himself cautiously concealed in the darkness, 
 and looking out anxiously upon the public way 
 immediately before him. 
 
 He had waited but a short time when a hand- 
 some chariot, preceded by a body-guard of gaily- 
 attired slaves, stopped within a few paces of his 
 lurking-place, and the voice of the person it con- 
 tained pronounced audibly the following words : — 
 
 " No ! no ! Drive on — we are later than I 
 thought. If I stay to see this illumination of the 
 Basilica, I shall not be in time to receive my 
 guests for to-night's banquet. Besides this ines- 
 timable kitten of the breed most worshipped by 
 the ancient Egyptians has already taken cold, 
 and I would not for the world expose the suscep- 
 tible animal any longer than is necessary to the 
 
158 ANTONINA. 
 
 dampness of the night-air. Drive on, good Carrio, 
 drive on ! " 
 
 The old man scarcely waited for the conclusion 
 of this speech before he ran up to the chariot, 
 where he was immediately confronted by two 
 heads, one that of Vetranio the senator, the other 
 that of a glossy black kitten adorned with a collar 
 of rubies, and half enveloped in its master's ample 
 robes. Before the astonished noble could articu- 
 late a word, the man whispered in hoarse, hurried 
 accents, " I am Ulpius — dismiss your servants — 
 I have something important to say ! " 
 
 " Ha ! My worthy Ulpius ! You have a most 
 unhappy faculty of delivering a message with the 
 manner of an assassin ! But I must pardon your 
 unpleasant abruptness in consideration of your 
 dihgence. My excellent Carrio, if you value my 
 approbation, remove your companions and your- 
 self out of hearing ! " 
 
 The Freedman yielded instant obedience to his 
 master's mandate. The following conversation 
 then took place, the strange man opening it thus : 
 
 " You remember your promise ? " 
 
ANTONINA. 159 
 
 '' I do." 
 
 " Upon your honour as a nobleman and a 
 senator, you are prepared to abide by it whenever 
 it is necessary ? " 
 
 " I am." 
 
 " Then at the dawn of morning meet me at the 
 private gate of your palace garden, and I will con- 
 duct you to Antonina's bedchamber." 
 
 " The time will suit me. But why at the 
 dawn of morning ? " 
 
 " Because the Christian dotard will keep a vigil 
 until midnight, which the girl will most probably 
 attend. I wished to tell you this at your palace, 
 but I heard there, that you had gone to Aricia, 
 and would return by way of the Basilica. So I 
 posted myself to intercept you thus." 
 
 " Industrious Ulpius ! " 
 
 " Remember your promise ! " 
 
 Vetranio leaned forward to reply, but Ulpius 
 was gone. 
 
 As the senator again commanded his equipage 
 to move on, he looked from its window, as if once 
 more expecting to see his strange adherent still 
 
160 ANTONINA. 
 
 lurking near his chariot. He only perceived, 
 however, a man v^^hom he did not know, followed 
 by two others, walking rapidly past him. They 
 were Numerian and the spies. 
 
 '« At last, my projects are approaching consum- 
 mation," exclaimed Vetranio to himself, as he and 
 his kitten rolled off in the chariot. " It is well 
 that I thought of securing possession of Juha's 
 villa to-day, for I shall now, assuredly, want to use 
 it to-morrow. Jupiter ! What a mass of dangers, 
 contradictions, and mysteries, encompass this 
 affair ! When I think that I, who prided myself 
 on my philosophy, have quitted Ravenna; bor- 
 rowed a private villa ; leagued myself with an 
 uncultivated plebeian ; and all for the sake of a 
 girl, who has already deceived my expectations by 
 gaining me as a music-master without admitting 
 me as a lover, I am positively astonished at my 
 own weakness ! Still, it must be owned that the 
 complexion my adventure has lately assumed, 
 renders it of some interest in itself. The mere 
 pleasure of penetrating the secrets of this Nume- 
 rian s household, is by no means the least among 
 
ANTONTNA. 161 
 
 the numerous attractions of my design. How has 
 he gained his influence over the girl ? Why does 
 he keep her in such strict seclusion ? Who is this 
 old half-frantic, unceremonious man-monster, 
 calling himself Ulpius ; refusing all reward for his 
 villany ; raving about a return to the old religion 
 of the gods ; and exulting in the promise he has 
 extorted from me, as a good pagan, to support the 
 first restoration of the ancient worship that may be 
 attempted in Rome ? Where does he come from ? 
 Why does he outwardly profess himself a Christian! 
 What sent him into Numerian's service ? By the 
 girdle of Venus ! Everything connected with the 
 girl, is as incomprehensible as herself ! But 
 patience — patience ! A few hours more, and these 
 mysteries will be revealed. In the meantime, let 
 me think of my banquet, and of its presiding 
 deity, the Nightingale Sauce ! " 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 ANTONINA. 
 
 Who that has been at Rome does not remember 
 with dehght, the attractions of the Pincian Hill ? 
 Who, after toiling through the wonders of the 
 dark, melancholy city, has not been revived by a 
 visit to its shady walks, and by breathing its 
 fragrant breezes ? Amid the solemn mournfulness 
 that reigns over declining Rome, this delightful 
 elevation rises light, airy and inviting, at once a 
 refreshment to the body and a solace to the spirit. 
 From its smooth summit, the city is seen in 
 its utmost majesty, and the surrounding country 
 in its brightest aspect. The crimes and miseries 
 of Rome seem deterred from approaching its fa- 
 voured soil ; it impresses the mind as a place set 
 apart by common consent for the presence of the 
 
ANTONINA. 163 
 
 innocent and the joyful— as a scene that rest 
 and recreation keep sacred from the intrusion of 
 tumult and toil. 
 
 Its appearance in modern days is the picture of 
 its character for ages past. Successive wars 
 might dull its beauties for a time, but peace 
 invariably restored them in all their pristine love- 
 liness. The old Romans called it '' The Mount of 
 Gardens." Throughout the disasters of the Empire 
 and the convulsions of the Middle Ages, it conti- 
 nued to merit its ancient appellation, and a 
 " Mount of Gardens" it still triumphantly remains 
 to the present day. 
 
 At the commencement of the fifth century, the 
 magnificence of the Pincian Hill was at its zenith. 
 Were it consistent with the conduct of our story, 
 to dwell upon the glories of its palaces and its 
 groves, its temples and its theatres, such a glowing 
 prospect of artificial splendour aided by natural 
 beauty, might be spread before the reader as 
 would tax his credulity, while it excited his 
 astonishment. Such a task, however, it is here 
 unnecessary to attempt. It is not for the wonders 
 
164 ANTONINA. 
 
 of ancient luxury and taste, but for the abode of 
 the zealous and religious Numerian, that we find 
 it now requisite to arouse interest and engage 
 attention. 
 
 At the back of the Flaminian extremity of the 
 Pincian Hill, and immediately overlooking the 
 city wall, stood, at the period of which we write, 
 a small but elegantly built house surrounded by a 
 little garden of its own, and protected at the back 
 by the lofty groves and outbuildings of the palace 
 of Vetranio the senator. This abode had been 
 at one time a sort of summer house belonging to 
 the former proprietor of a neighbouring mansion. 
 
 Profligate necessities had obliged the owner to 
 part with this portion of his possessions, which was 
 purchased by a merchant well known to Numerian, 
 who received it as a legacy at his friend's death. 
 Disgusted as soon as his reforming projects took 
 possession of his mind, at the bare idea of pro- 
 pinquity to the ennobled libertines of Rome, the 
 austere Christian determined to abandon his 
 inheritance, and to sell it to another ; but at the 
 repeated entreaties of his daughter, he at length 
 
ANTONINA. 165 
 
 consented to change his purpose, and sacrifice his 
 antipathy to his luxurious neighbours to his child's 
 youthful attachment to the beauties of Nature, as 
 displayed in his legacy on the Pincian Mount. 
 In this instance only, did the natural affection of 
 the father prevail over the acquired severity of the 
 reformer. Here he condescended for the first 
 and the last time, to the sweet trivialities of youth. 
 Here, indulgent in spite of himself, he fixed his 
 Httle household, and permitted to his daughter 
 her sole recreations of tending the flowers in the 
 garden, and luxuriating in the loveliness of the 
 distant view. 
 
 The night has advanced an hour since the 
 occurrences mentioned in the preceding chapter. 
 The clear and brilHant moonhght of Italy now 
 pervades every district of the glorious city, and 
 bathes in its pure effulgence the groves and 
 palaces on the Pincian Mount. From the garden 
 of Numerian, the irregular buildings of the great 
 suburbs of Rome, the rich undulating country 
 beyond, and the long ranges of mountains in the 
 
166 ANTONINA. 
 
 distance, are now all visible in the soft and luxu- 
 rious light. Near the spot which commands this 
 view, not a Hving creature is to be seen on a first 
 examination ; but on a more industrious and 
 patient observation, you are subsequently able to 
 detect at one of the windows of Numerian''s house, 
 half hidden by a curtain, the figure of a young 
 girl. 
 
 Soon this solitary form approaches nearer to 
 the eye; the moonbeams that have hitherto 
 shone only upon the window now illuminate other 
 objects. First, they display a small, white arm ; 
 then a light, simple robe ; then a fair, graceful 
 neck ; and finally a bright, youthful, innocent 
 face, directed stedfastly towards the wide moon- 
 brightened prospect of the distant mountains. 
 
 For some time the girl remains in contemplation 
 at her window. Then she leaves her post, and 
 almost immediately re-appears at a door leading 
 into the garden. Her figure, as she advances 
 towards the lawn before her, is light and small — a 
 natural grace and propriety appear in her move- 
 ments — she holds pressed to her bosom and half 
 
ANTONINA. 167 
 
 concealed by her robe, a gilt lute. When she 
 reaches a turf bank commanding the same view as 
 the window, she arranges her instrument upon her 
 knee, and with something of restraint in her 
 manner, gently touches the chords. Then, as if 
 alarmed at the sound she has produced, she glances 
 anxiously around her, apparently fearful of being 
 overheard. Her large, dark, lustrous eyes have 
 in them an expression of apprehension ; her deli- 
 cate lips are half parted ; a sudden flush rises in 
 her soft, olive complexion, as she examines every 
 corner of the garden. Having completed her 
 survey without discovering any cause for the sus- 
 picions she seems to entertain, she again employs 
 herself over her instrument. Once more she strikes 
 the chords, and now with a bolder hand. The 
 notes she produces resolve themselves into a wild, 
 plaintive, irregular melody, alternately rising and 
 sinking as if swayed by the fickle influence of a 
 summer wind. These sounds are soon harmo- 
 niously augmented by the young minstrel's voice, 
 which is calm, still, and mellow, and adapts itself 
 with exquisite ingenuity to every arbitrary varia- 
 
168 ANTONINA. 
 
 tion in the tone of the accompaniment. The song 
 that she has chosen is one of the fanciful odes of 
 the day. It chief merit to her, Hes in its alHance 
 to the strange Eastern air, which she heard at her 
 first interview with the senator who presented her 
 with the lute. Paraphrased in English, the words 
 of the composition would run thus : — 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC. 
 
 Spirit, whose dominion reigns 
 Over Music's thrilling strains, 
 Whence may be thy distant birth 1 
 Say what tempted thee to earth ? 
 
 Mortal, listen ! I was born 
 
 In Creation's early years, 
 Singing, 'mid the stars of morn. 
 
 To the music of the spheres. 
 
 Once, as within the realms of space, 
 I view'd this mortal planet roll, 
 
 A yearning towards thy hapless race, 
 Unbidden, fiU'd my seraph soul ! 
 
 Angels, who had watch'd my birth. 
 Heard me sigh to sing to earth ; 
 'Twas transgression ne'er forgiv'n 
 To forget my native Heav'n ; 
 So, they sternly bade me go — 
 Banish'd to the world below ! 
 
ANTONINA. 169 
 
 Exil'd here, I knew no fears ; 
 
 For, though darkness round me clung 
 Though none heard me in the spheres, 
 
 Earth had listeners while I sung. 
 
 Young spirits of the Spring-sweet breeze 
 Came thronging round me, soft and coy 
 
 Light Wood-nymphs sported in the trees, 
 And laughing Echo leapt for joy ! 
 
 Brooding Woe and writhing Pain 
 Soften'd at my gentle strain ; 
 Bounding Joy, with footstep fleet. 
 Ran to nestle at my feet ; 
 While arous'd, delighted Love 
 Softly kiss'd me from above ! 
 
 Since those years of early time, 
 
 Faithful still to earth I 've sung ; 
 Flying through each distant clime, 
 
 Ever welcome, ever young ! 
 
 Still pleas'd, my solace I impart, 
 
 Where brightest hopes are scattered dead ; 
 
 'Tis mine — sweet gift ! — to charm the heart, 
 Though all its other joys have fled ! 
 
 Time, that withers all beside, 
 Harmless past me loves to glide ; 
 Change, that mortals must obey, 
 Ne'er shall shake my gentle sway ; 
 Still, 'tis mine all hearts to move. 
 In eternity of love ! 
 
 As the last sounds of her voice and her lute 
 died softly away upon the still night air, an indes- 
 
170 ANTONINA. 
 
 cribable elevation appeared in the girl's coun- 
 tenance. She looked up rapturously into the far, 
 star-bright sky ; her lip quivered ; her dark eyes 
 filled with tears, and her bosom heaved with the 
 excess of the emotions that the music and the 
 scene inspired. Then she gazed slowly around 
 her, dwelling tenderly upon the fragrant flower- 
 beds that were the work of her own hands, and 
 looking forth with an expression half reverential, 
 half ecstatic, over the long, smooth, shining plains, 
 and the still, glorious mountains, that had so long 
 been the inspiration of her most cherished thoughts, 
 and that now glowed before her eyes, soft and 
 beautiful as her dreams on her virgin couch. 
 Then overpowered by the artless thoughts and 
 innocent recollections which on the magic wings 
 of Nature and Night came wafted over her mind, 
 she bent down her head upon her lute ; pressed 
 her round, dimpled cheek, against its smooth 
 frame, and drawing her fingers mechanically over 
 its strings, abandoned herself unreservedly to the 
 reveries of maidenhood and youth. 
 
 Such was the being devoted by her father's 
 
ANTONINA. 171 
 
 fatal ambition to a life-long banishment from all 
 that is attractive in human art, and beautiful in 
 human intellect ! Such was the daughter whose 
 existence was to be one long acquaintance with 
 mortal woe, one unvaried refusal of mortal plea- 
 sure, whose thoughts were to be only of sermons 
 and fasts, whose actions were to be confined to 
 the binding of strangers^ wounds and the drying of 
 strangers' tears, whose life, in brief, was doomed 
 to be the embodiment of her father's austere ideal 
 of the austere virgins of the ancient Church ! 
 
 Deprived of her mother, exiled from the com- 
 panionship of others of her age, permitted no 
 familiarity with any living being — no sympathies 
 with any other heart, commanded but never in- 
 dulged, rebuked but never applauded; she must 
 have sunk beneath the severities imposed on her 
 by her father, but for the venial disobedience com- 
 mitted in the pursuit of the soHtary pleasure 
 procured for her by her lute. Vainly, in her 
 hours of study, did she read the fierce anathemas 
 against love, liberty, and pleasure, poetry, painting, 
 and music, gold, silver, and precious stones, which 
 
 i2 
 
172 ANTONINA. 
 
 the ancient Fathers had composed for the benefit 
 of the submissive congregations of former days; 
 vainly did she imagine, during those long hours of 
 theological instruction, that her heart's forbidden 
 longings were banished and destroyed — that her 
 patient and child-like disposition was bowed in 
 complete subserviency to the most rigorous of her 
 father s commands. No sooner were her interviews 
 with Numerian concluded, than the promptings of 
 that nature within us, which artifice may warp 
 but can never destroy, lured her into a forgetful- 
 ness of all that she had heard and a longing for 
 much that was forbidden. We live, in this ex- 
 istence, but by the companionship of some sym- 
 pathy, aspiration, or pursuit, which serves us as 
 our habitual refuge from the tribulations we 
 inherit from the outer world. The same feeling 
 which led Antonina, in her childhood, to beg for 
 a flower-garden; in her girlhood, induced her to 
 gain possession of a lute. 
 
 The passion for music which prompted her visit 
 to Vetranio, which alone saved her affections from 
 pining in the solitude imposed on them, and which 
 
ANTONINA. 173 
 
 occupied her leisure hours in the manner we have 
 already described, was an inheritance of her birth. 
 Her Spanish mother had sung to her, hour after 
 hour, in her cradle, for the short time during 
 which she was permitted to watch over her child. 
 The impression thus made on the dawning faculties 
 of the infant, nothing ever effaced. Though her 
 earliest perceptions were greeted only by the 
 sight of her father s misery ; though the form 
 which his despairing penitence soon assumed, 
 doomed her to a life of seclusion and an education 
 of admonition, the passionate attachment to the 
 melody of sound, inspired by her mother's voice — 
 almost imbibed at her mother^s breast, lived 
 through all neglect and survived all opposition. 
 It found its nourishment in childish recollections, 
 in snatches of street minstrelsy heard through her 
 window, in the passage of the night- winds of 
 winter through the groves on the Pincian Mount ; 
 and received its rapturous gratification in the first 
 audible sounds from the Roman senator's lute. 
 How her possession of an instrument, and her skill 
 in playing, were subsequently gained, the reader 
 
174 ANTONINA. 
 
 already knows from Vetranio's narrative at 
 Ravenna. Could the frivolous senator have dis- 
 covered the real intensity of the emotions his art 
 was raising in his pupil's bosom, while he taught 
 her ; could he have imagined how incessantly, 
 during their lessons, her sense of duty struggled 
 with her love for music — how completely she was 
 absorbed, one moment by an agony of doubt and 
 fear, another, by an ecstacy of enjoyment and 
 hope ; he would have felt little of that astonish- 
 ment at her coldness towards himself, which he 
 so warmly expressed at his interview with Julia 
 in the gardens of the Court. In truth, nothing 
 could be more complete than Antonina's childish 
 unconsciousness of the feelings with which Vetranio 
 regarded her. In entering his presence, whatever 
 remnant of her affections remained unwithered by 
 her fears, was solely attracted and engrossed by 
 the beloved and beautiful lute. In receiving the 
 instrument she almost forgot the giver, in the 
 triumph of possession ; or, if she thought of him 
 at all, it was to be grateful for having escaped 
 uninjured from a member of that class, for whom 
 
ANTONINA. 175 
 
 her father's reiterated admonitions had inspired 
 her with a vague feeling of dread and distrust, 
 and to determine that, now she had acknowledged 
 his kin^dness and departed from his domains, 
 nothing should ever induce her to risk discovery 
 by her father and peril to herself, by ever entering 
 them again. 
 
 Innocent in her isolation, almost infantine in 
 her natural simplicity, a single enjoyment was 
 sufficient to satisfy all the passions of her age. 
 Father, mother, lover and companion ; Hberties, 
 amusements, and adornments — they were all 
 summed up for her in that simple lute. The 
 archness, the liveliness, and the gentleness of her 
 disposition ; the poetry of her nature and the 
 affection of her heart ; the happy bloom of youth 
 which seclusion could not all wither, nor distorted 
 precept taint, were now entirely nourished, ex- 
 panded, and freshened — such is the creative power 
 of human emotion — by that inestimable possession. 
 She could speak to it, smile on it, caress it ; and 
 believe in the ecstacy of her delight, in the care- 
 lessness of her self-delusion, that it sympathised 
 
176 ANTONINA. 
 
 with her joy. During her long solitudes, when 
 she was silently watched in her father^s absence by 
 the brooding, melancholy stranger whom he had 
 set over her, it became a companion dearer than 
 the flower-garden, dearer even than the plains 
 and mountains which formed her favourite view. 
 When her father returned, and she was led forth 
 to sit in a dark place among strange, silent people, 
 and to listen to interminable declamations, it was 
 a solace to think of the instrument, as it lay hidden 
 securely in her chamber ; and to ponder delight- 
 edly on what new music of her own she should play 
 upon it next. And then, when evening arrived, 
 and she was left alone in her garden — then came 
 the hour of moonlight and song; the moment of 
 rapture and melody that drew her out of herself, 
 elevated her she felt not how, and transported her 
 she knew not whither. 
 
 But, while we thus linger over reflections on 
 motives and examinations into character, we are 
 called back to the outer world of passing interests 
 and events, by the appearance of another figure 
 on the scene. We left Antonina in the garden 
 
ANTONTNA. 177 
 
 thinking over her lute. She still remains in her 
 meditative position, but she is now no longer alone. 
 
 From the same steps by which she had des- 
 cended a man now advances into the garden, and 
 walks towards the place she occupies. His gait is 
 limping ; his stature crooked ; his proportions dis- 
 torted. His large, angular features, stand out in 
 gaunt contrast to his shrivelled cheeks. His dry, 
 matted hair has been burnt by the sun into a 
 strange, tawny brown. His expression is one of 
 fixed, stern, mournful thought. As he steps 
 stealthily along, advancing towards Antonina, he 
 mutters to himself, and clutches mechanically at 
 his garments, with his lank, shapeless fingers. 
 The radiant moonlight falling full upon his coun- 
 tenance invests it with a livid, mysterious, spectral 
 appearance : seen by a stranger at the present 
 moment he would have been almost awful to look 
 upon. 
 
 This was the man who had intercepted Vetranio 
 on his journey home, and who had now hurried 
 back so as to regain his accustomed post before 
 his master's return, for he was the same individual 
 
178 ANTONINA. 
 
 mentioned by Numerian as his aged convert, 
 Ulpius, in his interview with the landholder at the 
 BasiHca of St. Peter. 
 
 When Ulpius had arrived within a few paces of 
 the girl he stopped, saying in a hoarse, thick voice : 
 
 " Hide your toy — Numerian is at the gates ! " 
 
 Antonina started violently as she listened to 
 those repulsive accents. The blood rushed into 
 her cheeks ; she hastily covered the lute with her 
 robe ; paused an instant as if intending to speak 
 to the man, then shuddered violently and hurried 
 towards the house. 
 
 As she mounted the steps Numerian met her in 
 the hall. There was now no chance of hiding the 
 lute in its accustomed place. 
 
 " You stay too late in the garden," said the 
 father, looking proudly in spite of all his austerity 
 upon his beautiful daughter as she stood by 
 his side. " But what affects you ? " he added, 
 noticing her confusion. " You tremble ; your 
 colour comes and goes ; your lips quiver ; give 
 me your hand ! " 
 
 As Antonina obeyed him a fold of the treach- 
 
ANTONINA. 179 
 
 erous robe slipped aside, and discovered a part of 
 the frame of the lute. Numerian's quick eye dis- 
 covered it immediately. He snatched the instru- 
 ment from her feeble grasp. His astonishment 
 on beholding it was too great for words, and 
 for an instant he confronted the poor girl, whose 
 pale face looked rigid with terror, in ominous and 
 expressive silence. 
 
 " This thing," said he at length, " this invention 
 of libertines in my house ; in my daughter's pos- 
 session ! " and he dashed the lute into fragments 
 on the floor. 
 
 For one moment Antonina looked incredulously 
 on the ruins of the beloved companion which was 
 the centre of all her happiest expectations for 
 future days. Then as she began to estimate the 
 reality of her deprivation her eyes lost all their 
 heaven-born brightness, and filled to overflowing 
 with the tears of earth. 
 
 " To your chamber ! " thundered Numerian, as 
 she knelt sobbing convulsively over those hapless 
 fragments. " To your chamber ! To-morrow shall 
 bring this mystery of iniquity to light ! " 
 
180 ANTONINA. 
 
 She rose humbly to obey him, for indignation 
 had no part in the emotions that shook her gentle 
 and affectionate nature. As she moved towards 
 the room that no lute was henceforth to occupy, 
 as she thought on the morrow that no lute was 
 henceforth to enliven, her grief almost overpowered 
 her. She turned back and looked imploringly at 
 her father, as if entreating permission to pick up 
 even the smallest of the fragments at his feet. 
 
 " To your chamber ! " he reiterated, sternly. 
 " Am I to be disobeyed to my face ? " 
 
 Without any repetition of her silent remon- 
 strance, she instantly retired. As soon as she was 
 out of sight, Ulpius ascended the steps and stood 
 before the angered father. 
 
 " Look, Ulpius/' cried Numerian, " my daughter 
 whom I have so carefully cherished, whom I 
 intended for an example to the world, has deceived 
 me, even thus ! " 
 
 He pointed as he spoke, to the ruins of the 
 unfortunate lute, but Ulpius did not address to 
 him a word in reply, and he hastily continued : — 
 
 " I will not sully the solemn offices of to-night 
 
ANTONINA. 181 
 
 by interrupting them with my worldly affairs. 
 To-morrow, I will interrogate my disobedient 
 child. In the meantime, do not imagine, Ulpius, 
 that I connect you in any way with this wicked 
 and unworthy deception ! In you I have every 
 confidence, in your faithfulness I have every 
 hope ! " 
 
 Again he paused, and again Ulpius kept silence. 
 Any one less agitated, less confiding, than his 
 unsuspicious master, would have remarked that a 
 faint sinister smile, was breaking forth upon his 
 haggard countenance. But Numerian's indig- 
 nation was still too violent to permit him to 
 observe, and spite of his efforts to control himself, 
 he again broke forth in complaint. 
 
 " On this night too, of all others,*' cried he, 
 " when I had hoped to lead her among my little 
 assembly of the faithful, to join in their prayers 
 and to listen to my exhortations — on this night 
 I am doomed to find her a player on a Pagan 
 lute, a possessor of the most wanton of the world's 
 vanities ! God give me patience to worship this 
 night with unwandering thoughts, for my heart is 
 
182 ANTONINA. 
 
 vexed at the transgression of my child, as the 
 heart of Eli of old at the iniquities of his sons ! " 
 
 He was moving rapidly away, when, as if struck 
 with a sudden recollection, he stopped abruptly 
 and again addressed his gloomy companion. 
 
 " I will go by myself to the chapel to-night," 
 said he. " You, Ulpius, will stay to keep watch 
 over my disobedient child. Be vigilant, good 
 friend, over my house, for even now, on my return, 
 I thought that two strangers were following my 
 steps, and I forbode some evil in store for me as 
 the chastisement for my sins, even greater than 
 this misery of my daughter's transgression. Be 
 watchful, good Ulpius — be watchful ! " 
 
 And as he hurried away, the stern, serious man 
 felt as overwhelmed at the outrage that had been 
 offered to his gloomy fanaticism, as the weak, 
 timid girl, at the destruction that had been 
 wreaked upon her harmless lute. 
 
 After Numerian had departed, the sinister smile 
 again appeared on the countenance of Ulpius. 
 He stood for a short time fixed in thought, and 
 then began slowly to descend a staircase near him. 
 
ANTONINA. 183 
 
 which led to some subterranean apartments. He 
 had not gone far, when a slight noise became 
 audible at an extremity of the corridor above. 
 As he listened for a repetition of the sound, he 
 heard a sob, and looking cautiously up, discovered, 
 by the moonlight, Antonina stepping cautiously 
 along the marble pavement of the hall. 
 
 She held in her hand a little lamp ; her small, 
 rosy feet were uncovered ; the tears still streamed 
 over her cheeks. She advanced with the greatest 
 caution (as if fearful of being overheard) until she 
 gained the part of the floor still strewn with the 
 ruins of the broken lute. Here she knelt down, 
 and pressed each fragment that lay before her 
 separately to her lips. Then, hurriedly conceal- 
 ing a single piece in her bosom, she arose and 
 stole quickly away, in the direction by which 
 she had come. 
 
 " Be patient till the dawn,'' muttered her faith- 
 less guardian, gazing after her from his conceal- 
 ment, as she disappeared, " it will bring to thy 
 lute a restorer, and to Ulpius an ally ! " 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AN APPRENTICESHIP TO THE TEMPLE. 
 The action of our characters during the night 
 giving occasion to the last two chapters, has now 
 come to a pause. Vetranio is awaiting his guests 
 for the banquet ; Numerian is in the chapel, pre- 
 paring the discourse that he is to deliver to his 
 friends; Ulpius is meditating in his master's 
 house; Antonina is stretched upon her couch, 
 caressing the precious fragment that she has saved 
 from the ruins of her lute. All the immediate 
 agents of our story are, for the present, in repose. 
 It is our purpose to take advantage of this 
 interval of inaction, and direct the reader's atten- 
 tion to a different country from that selected as 
 the scene of our romance, and to such historical 
 events of past years as connect themselves remark- 
 
ANTONINA. 185 
 
 ably with the early life of Numerian's perfidious 
 convert. This man will be found a person of 
 great importance (however uninteresting he may 
 hitherto have appeared) in the conduct of our 
 story. It is necessary to the comprehension of 
 his character, and the penetration of such of his 
 purposes as have been already hinted at, and may 
 subsequently appear, that the course of his exist- 
 ence should be traced upwards to its source. 
 
 It was in the reign of Julian, when the gods of 
 the Pagan achieved their last triumph over the 
 Gospel of the Christian, that a decently-attired 
 man, leading by the hand a handsome boy of 
 fifteen years of age, entered the gates of Alexan- 
 dria, and proceeded hastily towards the High 
 Priest's dwelling in the Temple of Serapis. 
 
 After a stay of some hours at his destination, 
 the man left the city alone as hastily as he had 
 entered it, and was never after seen at Alexandria. 
 The boy remained in the abode of the High Priest 
 until the next day, when he was solemnly devoted 
 to the service of the Temple. 
 
 The boy was the young Emilius, afterwards 
 
 
186 ANTONINA. 
 
 called Ulpius. He was nephew to the High Priest 
 to whom he had been confided by his father, a 
 merchant of Rome. 
 
 Ambition was the ruling passion of the father of 
 Emilius. It had prompted him to aspire to every 
 distinction granted to the successful by the State, 
 but it had not gifted him with the powers requi- 
 site to turn his aspirations in any instance into 
 acquisitions. He passed through existence a dis- 
 appointed man, planning but never performing, 
 seeing his more fortunate brother rising to the 
 highest distinction in the priesthood, and finding 
 himself irretrievably condemned to exist in the 
 affluent obscurity ensured to him by his mercan- 
 tile pursuits. 
 
 When his brother Macrinus, on Julian's acces- 
 sion to the Imperial throne, arrived at the pin- 
 nacle of power and celebrity as High Priest of the 
 Temple of Serapis, the unsuccessful merchant lost 
 all hope of rivalling his relative in the pursuit of 
 distinction. His insatiable ambition discarded from 
 himself now settled on one his infant sons. He 
 determined that his child should be successful 
 
ANTONINA. 187 
 
 where he had failed. Now that his brother had 
 secured the highest elevation in the Temple, no 
 calling could offer more direct advantages to a 
 member of his household than the priesthood. 
 His family had been from their earliest origin 
 rigid Pagans. One of them had already attained 
 to the most distinguished honours of his gorgeous 
 worship. He determined that another should 
 rival his kinsman, and that that other should be 
 his eldest son. 
 
 Firm in this resolution, he at once devoted his 
 child to the great design which he now held conti- 
 nually in view. He knew well that Paganism, 
 revived though it was, was not the universal 
 worship that it had been ; that it was now se- 
 cretly resisted, and might, soon, be openly opposed 
 by the persecuted Christians throughout the 
 empire ; and that if the young generation were to 
 guard it successfully from all future encroach- 
 ments, and to rise securely to its highest honours, 
 more must be exacted from them, than the easy 
 attachment to the ancient religion required from 
 the votaries of former days. Then, the per- 
 
188 ANTONINA. 
 
 formance of the most important offices in the 
 priesthood was compatible with the possession of 
 mihtary or political rank. Now, it was to the 
 Temple, and to the Temple only, that the future 
 servant of the gods should be devoted. Resolving 
 thus, the father took care that all the son's occu- 
 pations and rewards should, from his earliest 
 years, be in some way connected with the career 
 for which he was intended. His childish pleasures 
 were to be conducted to sacrifices and auguries ; 
 his childish playthings and prizes were images 
 of the deities. No opposition was offered on the 
 boy's part to this plan of education. Far different 
 from his younger brother, whose turbulent disposi- 
 tion defied all authority, he was naturally docile ; 
 and his imagination, vivid beyond his years, was 
 easily led captive by any remarkable object pre- 
 sented to it. With such encouragement, his 
 father became thoroughly engrossed by the occu- 
 pation of forming him for his future existence. 
 His mother's influence over him was jealously 
 watched ; the secret expression of her love, of 
 her sorrow at the prospect of parting with him, 
 
ANTONINA. 189 
 
 was ruthlessly suppressed, whenever it was disco- 
 vered; and his younger brother was neglected, 
 almost forgotten, in order that the parental watch- 
 fulness might be entirely and invariably devoted 
 to the eldest son. 
 
 When EmiHus had numbered fifteen years, his 
 father saw with delight that the time had come 
 when he could witness the commencement of the 
 realisation of all his projects. The boy was re- 
 moved from home, taken to Alexandria, and 
 gladly left, by his proud and triumphant father, 
 under the especial guardianship of Macrinus, the 
 High Priest. 
 
 The chief of the temple fully sympathised in 
 his brother's designs for the young Emilius. As 
 soon as the boy had entered on his new occu- 
 pations, he was told that he must forget all that 
 he had left behind him at Rome ; that he must 
 look upon the High Priest as his father, and upon 
 the Temple, henceforth, as his home ; and that the 
 sole object of his present labours and future ambi- 
 tion, must be to rise in the service of the gods. 
 Nor did Macrinus stop here. So thoroughly 
 
190 ANTONINA. 
 
 anxious was he to stand to his pupil in the place 
 of a parent, and to secure his allegiance by with- 
 drawing him in every way from the world in 
 which he had hitherto lived, that he even changed 
 his name, giving to him one of his own appel- 
 lations, and describing it as a privilege to stimulate 
 him to future exertions. From the boy Emilius, 
 he was now permanently transformed to the 
 student Ulpius. 
 
 With such a natural disposition as we have 
 already described, and under such guardianship as 
 that of the High Priest, there was little danger 
 that Ulpius would disappoint the unusual expec- 
 tations which had been formed of him. His 
 attention to his new duties never relaxed ; his 
 obedience to his new masters never wavered. 
 Whatever Macrinus demanded of him he was 
 sure to perform. Whatever longings he might 
 feel to return to home, he never discovered them — 
 he never sought to gratify the tastes naturally 
 peculiar to his age. The high priest and his 
 colleagues were astonished at the extraordinary 
 readiness with which the boy himself forwarded 
 
ANTONINA. 191 
 
 their intentions for him. Had they known how 
 elaborately he had been prepared for his future 
 employments at his father's house, they would 
 have been less astonished at their pupil's unusual 
 docility. Trained as he had been, he must have 
 shown a more than human perversity had he dis- 
 played any opposition to his uncle's wishes. He 
 had been permitted no childhood, either of thought 
 or action. His natural precocity had been seized as 
 the engine to force his faculties into a perilous and 
 unwholesome maturity ; and when his new duties 
 demanded his attention, he entered on them with 
 the same sincerity of enthusiasm which his boyish 
 coevals would have exhibited towards a new sport. 
 His gradual initiation into the mysteries of his 
 religion, created a strange, voluptuous sensation of 
 fear and interest in his mind. He heard the 
 oracles, and he trembled ; he attended the sacri- 
 fices and the auguries, and he wondered. All the 
 poetry of the bold and beautiful superstition to 
 which he was devoted, flowed overwhelmingly into 
 his young heart, absorbing the service of his fresh 
 imagination, and transporting him incessantly 
 
192 ANTONINA. 
 
 from the vital realities of the outer world, to the 
 shadowy regions of aspiration and thought. 
 
 But his duties did not entirely occupy the atten- 
 tion of Ulpius. The boy had his peculiar pleasures 
 as well as his peculiar occupations. When his 
 employments were over for the day, it was a 
 strange, unearthly, vital enjoyment to him to 
 wander softly in the shade of the Temple porticos, 
 looking down from his great mysterious eminence 
 upon the populous and sun-brightened city at his 
 feet ; watching the brilliant expanse of the waters 
 of the Nile glittering joyfully in the dazzling and 
 pervading light ; raising his eyes from the fields 
 and woods, the palaces and gardens, that stretched 
 out before him below, to the lovely and cloudless 
 sky that watched round him afar and above, and 
 that awoke all that his new duties had left of 
 the joyfulness, the affectionate sensibility which 
 his rare intervals of uninterrupted intercourse with 
 his mother had implanted in his heart. Then 
 when the daylight began to wane, and the moon 
 and stars already grew beautiful in their places in 
 the firmament, he would pass into the subter- 
 
ANTONINA. 193 
 
 ranean vaults of the edifice, trembling as his little 
 taper scarcely dispelled the dull, solemn gloom, 
 and listening with breathless attention for the 
 voices of those guardian spirits, whose fabled 
 habitation was made in the apartments of the 
 sacred place. Or — when the multitude had de- 
 parted for their amusements and their homes — he 
 would steal into the lofty halls and wander round 
 the pedestals of the mighty statues, breathing 
 fearfully the still atmosphere of the Temple, and 
 watching the passage of the cold, melancholy 
 moonbeams through the openings in the roof, and 
 over the colossal limbs and features of the images 
 of the Pagan gods. Sometimes when the services 
 of Serapis, and the cares attendant on his com- 
 munications with the Emperor were concluded, 
 Macrinus would lead his pupil into the garden of 
 the priests, and praise him for his docility till his 
 heart tlirobbed with gratitude and pride. Some- 
 times he would convey him cautiously outside the 
 precincts of the sacred place, and show him in the 
 suburbs of the city, silent, pale, melancholy men, 
 gliding suspiciously through the gay, crowded 
 
194 ANTONINA. 
 
 streets. Those fugitive figures, he would declare 
 were the enemies of the Temple and all that it 
 contained ; conspirators against the Emperor and 
 the gods ; wretches who were to be driven forth 
 as outcasts from humanity ; whose appellation was 
 " Christian ;" and whose impious worship, if tole- 
 rated, would deprive him of the uncle whom he 
 loved, of the Temple that he reverenced, and of 
 the priestly dignity and renown that it should be 
 his life's ambition to acquire. 
 
 Thus tutored in his duties by his guardian, and 
 in his recreations by himself, as time wore on, the 
 boy gradually lost every remaining characteristic 
 of his age. Even the remembrance of his mother 
 and his mother's love, grew faint on his memory. 
 Serious, solitary, thoughtful, he lived but to succeed 
 in the Temple ; he laboured but to emulate the 
 high priest. AP his feelings and faculties were 
 now enslaved by an ambition, at once unnatural at 
 his present age, and ominous of affliction for his 
 future life. The design that Macrinus had con- 
 templated as the work of years, was perfected in 
 a few months. The hope that his father had 
 
AXTOXINA. 195 
 
 scarce dared to entertain for his manhood, was 
 already accomplished in his youth. 
 
 In these preparations for future success passed 
 three years of the life of Ulpius. At the expira- 
 tion of that period, the death of Julian darkened 
 the brilliant prospects of the Pagan world. Scarcely 
 had the priests of Serapis recovered the first shock 
 of astonishment and grief, consequent upon the 
 fatal news of the vacancy in the Imperial throne, 
 when the edict of toleration, issued by Jovian the 
 new Emperor, reached the city of Alexandria, and 
 was elevated on the walls of the temple. 
 
 The first sight of this proclamation (permitting 
 freedom of worship to the Christians) aroused in 
 the highly-wrought disposition of Ulpius, the most 
 violent emotions of anger and contempt. The 
 enthusiasm of his character and age, guided 
 invariably in the one direction of his worship, 
 took the character of the wildest fanaticism when 
 he discovered the Emperor's careless infringement 
 of the supremacy of the temple. He volunteered, 
 in the first moments of his fury, to tear down the 
 edict from the walls ; to lead an attack on the 
 
196 ANTONINA. 
 
 meetings of the triumphant Christians; or to 
 travel to the Imperial abode, and exhort Jovian 
 to withdraw his act of perilous leniency ere it was 
 too late. With difficulty did his more cautious 
 confederates restrain him from the execution of 
 his impetuous designs. For two days he with- 
 drew himself from his companions, and brooded in 
 solitude over the injury offered to his beloved 
 superstition, and the prospective augmentation of 
 the influence of the Christian sect. 
 
 But the despair of the young enthusiast was 
 destined to be further augmented by a private 
 calamity, at once mysterious in its cause and over- 
 whelming in its effect. Two days after the 
 publication of the edict, the High Priest Macrinus, 
 in the prime of vigour and manhood, suddenly 
 died. 
 
 To narrate the confusion and horror within and 
 without the temple on the discovery of this fatal 
 event, to describe the execrations and tumults of 
 the priests and the populace, who at once suspected 
 the favoured and ambitious Christians of causing, 
 by poison, the death of their spiritual ruler, might 
 
ANTONINA. 197 
 
 be interesting as a history of the manners of the 
 times, but is immaterial to the object of this 
 Chapter. We prefer rather to trace the effect on 
 the mind of Ulpius^ of his personal and private 
 bereavement; of this loss —irretrievable to him — 
 of the master whom he loved and the guardian 
 whom it was his privilege to revere. 
 
 An illness of some months, during the latter part 
 of which his attendants trembled for his life and 
 reason, sufficiently attested the sincerity of the grief 
 of Ulpius for the loss of his protector. During his 
 paroxysms of delirium, the priests who watched 
 round his bed, drew from his ravings many wise 
 conclusions as to the effects that his seizure and its 
 causes were likely to produce on his future cha- 
 racter; but in spite of all their penetration, they 
 were still far from appreciating to a tithe of its 
 extent the revolution that his bereavement had 
 wrought in his disposition. The boy himself, until 
 the moment of the High Priest^s death, had never 
 been aware of the depth of his devotion to his 
 second father. Warped as they had been by his 
 natural parent, the affectionate qualities that were 
 
198 ANTONINA. 
 
 the mainspring of his nature had never been 
 entirely destroyed ; and they seized on every kind 
 word and gentle action of Macrinus, as food which 
 had been grudged them since their birth. Morally 
 and intellectually, Macrinus had been to him the 
 beacon that pointed the direction of his course, 
 the judge that regulated his conduct, the Muse 
 that he looked to for inspiration. And now, that 
 this link which had connected every ramification 
 of his most cherished and governing ideas, was 
 suddenly snapt asunder, a desolation sunk down 
 upon his mind which at once paralysed its elasti- 
 city and withered its freshness. He glanced back, 
 and he saw nothing but a home from whose plea- 
 sures and affections his father's ambition had 
 exiled him for ever. He looked forward, and as 
 he thought of his unfitness, both from character 
 and education, to mix in the world as others 
 mixed in it, he saw no guiding star of social hap- 
 piness for the conduct of his existence to come. 
 There was now no resource left for him, but entirely 
 to deliver himself up to those pursuits which had 
 made his home as a strange place to him ; which 
 
ANTONINA. 199 
 
 were hallowed by their connection with the lost 
 object of his attachment, and which would confer 
 the sole happiness and distinction that he could 
 hope for in the wide world on his future life. 
 
 In addition to this motive for labour in his 
 vocation, there existed in the mind of Ulpius a 
 deep and settled feeling that animated him with 
 unceasing ardour for the prosecution of his 
 cherished occupations. This governing principle 
 was detestation of the Christian sect. The suspi- 
 cion that others had entertained regarding the 
 death of the High Priest was, to his mind, a 
 certainty. He rejected every idea which opposed 
 his determined persuasion, that the jealousy of the 
 Christians had prompted them to the murder, by 
 poison, of the most powerful and zealous of the 
 Pagan priests. To labour incessantly until he 
 attained the influence and position formerly en- 
 joyed by his relative, and to use that influence 
 and position when once acquired, as the means of 
 avenging Macrinus, by sweeping every vestige 
 of the Christian faith from the face of the 
 earth, were now the settled purposes of his heart. 
 
200 ANTONINA. 
 
 Inspired by his determination with the dehberate 
 wisdom which is, in most men, the result only of 
 the experience of years, he employed the first 
 days of his convalescence in cautiously maturing 
 his future plans, and impartially calculating his 
 chances of success. This self-examination com- 
 pleted, he devoted himself at once and for ever to 
 his life's great design. Nothing wearied, nothing 
 discouraged, nothing impeded him. Outward 
 events passed by him unnoticed ; the city's afflic- 
 tions and the city's triumphs spoke no longer to 
 his heart. Year succeeded to year, but Time 
 had no tongue for him. Paganism gradually sank, 
 and Christianity imperceptibly rose, but Change 
 spread no picture before his eyes. The whole 
 outward world was a void to him, until the 
 moment arrived that beheld him successful in his 
 designs. His preparations for the future absorbed 
 every faculty of his nature, and left him, as to the 
 present, a mere automaton, reflecting no principle, 
 and animated by no event, — a machine that moved, 
 but did not perceive, — a body that acted, without 
 a mind that thought. 
 
ANTONINA. 201 
 
 Returning for a moment to the outward world, 
 we find that on the death of Jovian in 364, 
 Valentinian, the new Emperor, continued the 
 system of toleration adopted by his predecessor. 
 On his death in 375, Gratian, the successor to the 
 imperial throne, so far improved on the example of 
 the two former potentates as to range himself 
 boldly on the side of the partisans of the new 
 faith. Not content with merely encouraging, both 
 by precept and example, the growth of Christi- 
 anity, the Emperor further testified his zeal for 
 the rising religion, by inflicting incessant persecu- 
 tions upon the rapidly decreasing advocates of the 
 ancient worship ; serving, by these acts of his 
 reign, as pioneer to his successor, Theodosius the 
 Great, in the religious revolution which that illus- 
 trious opponent of Paganism was destined to 
 effect. 
 
 The death of Gratian, in 883, saw Ulpius en- 
 rolled among the chief priests of the temple, and 
 pointed out as the next inheritor of the important 
 office once held by the powerful and active 
 Macrinus. Beholding himself thus secure of the 
 
 k3 
 
202 ANTONINA. 
 
 distinction for which he had laboured, the aspiring 
 priest found leisure, at length, to look forth upon 
 the affairs of the passing day. From every side, 
 desolation darkened the prospect that he beheld. 
 Already, throughout many provinces of the Empire, 
 the temples of the gods had been overthrown by 
 the destructive zeal of the triumphant Christians. 
 Already hosts of the terrified people, fearing that 
 the fate of their idols might ultimately be their 
 own, finding themselves deserted by their dis- 
 banded priests and surrounded by the implacable 
 enemies of the ancient faith, had renounced their 
 worship for the sake of saving their lives and 
 securing their property. On the wide field of 
 Pagan ruin there now rose but one structure 
 entirely unimpaired. The Temple of Serapis still 
 reared its head — unshaken, unbending, unpolluted. 
 Here the sacrifice still prospered and the people 
 still bowed in worship. Before this monument of 
 the religious glories of ages, even the rising power 
 of Christian supremacy quailed in dismay. Though 
 the ranks of its once multitudinous congregations 
 were now perceptibly thinned, though the new 
 
ANTONINA. 203 
 
 churches swarmed with converts, though the edicts 
 from Rome denounced it as a blot on the face of 
 the earth, its gloomy and solitary grandeur was 
 still preserved. No unhallowed foot trod its secret 
 recesses ; no destroying hand was raised, as yet, 
 against its ancient and glorious walls. 
 
 Indignation, but not despondency, filled the 
 heart of Ulpius as he surveyed the situation of 
 the Pagan world. A determination nourished as 
 his had been by the reflections of years, and 
 matured by incessant industry of deliberation, is 
 above all those shocks which affect a hasty deci- 
 sion^ or destroy a wavering intention. Impervious 
 to failure, disasters urge it into action, but never 
 depress it to repose. Its existence is the air that 
 preserves the vitality of the mind — the spring that 
 moves the action of the thoughts. Never for a 
 moment, did Ulpius waver in his devotion to his 
 great design, or despair of its ultimate execution 
 and success. Though every succeeding day 
 brought the news of fresh misfortunes for the 
 Pagans and fresh triumphs for the Christians, still, 
 with a few of his more zealous comrades, he per- 
 
204 ANTONINA. 
 
 sisted in expecting the advent of another Julian, 
 and a day of restoration for the dismantled shrines 
 of the deities that he served. While the Temple 
 of Serapis stood uninjured, to give encouragement 
 to his labours and refuge to his persecuted 
 brethren, there existed for him such an earnest of 
 success as would spur him to any exertion, and 
 nerve him against any peril. 
 
 And now, to the astonishment of priests and 
 congregations, the silent, thoughtful, solitary 
 Ulpius, suddenly started from his long repose, and 
 stood forth the fiery advocate of the rights of his 
 invaded worship. In a few days, the fame of his 
 addresses to the Pagans who still attended the 
 rites of Serapis, spread throughout the whole city. 
 The boldest among the Christians, as they passed 
 the Temple walls, involuntarily trembled when they 
 heard the vehemence of the applause that arose from 
 the audience of the inspired priest. Addressed to 
 all varieties of age and character, these harangues 
 woke an echo in every breast they reached. To 
 the young they were clothed in all the poetry of 
 the worship for which they pleaded. They dwelt 
 
ANTONINA. 205 
 
 on the altars of Venus that the Christians would 
 lay waste ; on the woodlands that the Christians 
 would disenchant of their Dryads ; on the hal- 
 lowed Arts that the Christians would arise and 
 destroy. To the aged they called up remembrances 
 of the glories of the past, achieved through the 
 favour of the Gods ; of ancestors who had died in 
 their service; of old forgotten loves, and joys, and 
 successes, that had grown and prospered under 
 the gentle guardianship of the deities of old — 
 while the unvarying burden of their conclusion to 
 all, was the reiterated assertion that the illus- 
 trious Macrinus had died a victim to the toleration 
 of the Christian sect. 
 
 But the efforts of Ulpius were not confined to 
 the delivery of orations. Every moment of his 
 leisure time was dedicated to secret pilgrimages 
 into Alexandria. Careless of peril, regardless of 
 threats, the undaunted enthusiast penetrated into 
 the most private meeting-places of the Christians ; 
 reclaiming on every side apostates to the Pagan 
 creed, and defying the hostility of half the city 
 from the strong-hold of the Temple walls. Day 
 
206 ANTONINA. 
 
 after day fresh recruits arrived to swell the ranks 
 of the worshippers of Serapis. The few members 
 of the scattered congregations of the provinces, 
 who stiil remained faithful to the ancient worship, 
 were gathered together in Alexandria by the 
 private messengers of the unwearied Ulpius. 
 Already tumults began to take place between the 
 Pagans and the Christians ; and even now the 
 priests of Serapis prepared to address a protest to 
 the new Emperor in behalf of the ancient religion 
 of the land. At this moment it seemed probable 
 that the heroic attempts of one man to prop the 
 structure of superstition, whose foundations were 
 undermined throughout, and whose walls were 
 attacked by thousands, might actually be crowned 
 with success. 
 
 But Time rolled on ; and with him came inex- 
 orable Change, trampling over the little barriers 
 set up against it by human opposition, and erecting 
 its strange and transitory fabrics triumphantly in 
 their stead. In vain did the devoted priest exert 
 all his powers to augment and combine his scat- 
 tered band ; in vain did the mighty Temple display 
 
ANTONINA. 207 
 
 its ancient majesty, its gorgeous sacrifices, its 
 mysterious auguries. The spirit of Christianity 
 was forth for triumph on the earth — the last 
 destinies of Paganism were fast accompHshing. 
 Yet a few seasons more of unavailing resistance 
 passed by ; and then the Archbishop of Alexandria 
 issued his decree that the Temple of Serapis should 
 be destroyed. 
 
 At the rumour of their Primate's determination, 
 the Christian fanatics rose by swarms from every 
 corner of Eg}^t ; and hurried into Alexandria to 
 be present at the work of demolition. From the 
 arid solitudes of the Desert — from their convents 
 on rocks, and their caverns in the earth, hosts of 
 rejoicing monks flew to the city gates, and ranged 
 themselves with the soldiery and the citizens, 
 impatient for the assault. At the dawn of morn- 
 ing this assembly of destroyers was convened ; and 
 as the sun rose over Alexandria they arrived before 
 the Temple walls. 
 
 The gates of the glorious structure were barred 
 — the walls were crowded with their Pagan 
 defenders. A still, dead, mysterious silence 
 
208 ANTONINA. 
 
 reigned over the whole edifice ; and of all the 
 men who thronged it, one only moved from his 
 appointed place ; one only wandered incessantly 
 from point to point, wherever the building was 
 open to assault. Those among the besiegers who 
 were nearest the Temple saw in this presiding 
 genius of the preparations for defence, the object 
 at once of their most malignant hatred, and their 
 most ungovernable dread — Ulpius the priest. 
 
 As soon as the Archbishop gave the signal for 
 the assault, a band of monks — their harsh discor- 
 dant voices screaming fragments of psalms, their 
 tattered garments waving in the air, their cada- 
 verous faces gleaming with ferocious joy — led the 
 way, placed the first ladders against the walls, and 
 began the attack. From all sides the Temple was 
 assailed by the infuriated besiegers, and on all 
 sides it was successfully defended by the resolute 
 besieged. Shock after shock fell upon the massive 
 gates without forcing them to recede; missile after 
 missile was hurled at the building, but no breach 
 was made in its solid surface. Multitudes scaled 
 the walls, gained the outer porticos, and slaugh- 
 
ANTONINA. 209 
 
 tered their Pagan defenders, but were incessantly- 
 repulsed in their turn ere they could make their 
 advantage good. Over and over again did the 
 assailants seem on the point of storming the 
 Temple successfully, but the figure of Ulpius, in- 
 variably appearing at the critical moment among 
 his disheartened followers, acted like a fatality in 
 destroying the effect of the most daring exertions 
 and the most important triumphs. Wherever 
 there was danger, wherever there was carnage, 
 wherever there was despair, thither strode the 
 undaunted priest, inspiring the bold, succouring 
 the wounded, re-animating the feeble. Blinded by 
 no stratagem, wearied by no fatigue, there was 
 something almost demoniac in his activity for des- 
 truction, in his determination under defeat. The 
 besiegers marked his course round the Temple by 
 the calamities that befell them at his every step. 
 If the bodies of slaughtered Christians were flung 
 down upon them from the walls, they felt that 
 Ulpius was there. If the bravest of the soldiery 
 hesitated at mounting the ladders, it was known 
 that Ulpius was directing the defeat of their com- 
 
210 
 
 ANTONINA. 
 
 rades above. If a sally from the Temple drove 
 back the advanced guard upon the reserves in the 
 rear, it was pleaded as their excuse that Ulpius 
 was fighting at the head of his Pagan bands. 
 Crowd on crowd of Christian warriors still pressed 
 forward to the attack ; but though the ranks of 
 the unbelievers were perceptibly thinned, though 
 the gates that defended them at last began to 
 quiver before the reiterated blows by which they 
 were assailed, every court of the sacred edifice yet 
 remained in the possession of the besieged, and 
 was at the disposal of the unconquered captain 
 who organised the defence. 
 
 Depressed by the failure of his efforts, and hor- 
 rified at the carnage already perpetrated among 
 his adherents, the Archbishop suddenly com- 
 manded a cessation of hostilities, and proposed to 
 the defenders of the Temple a short and favour- 
 able truce. After some delay, and apparently at 
 the expense of some discord among their ranks, 
 the Pagans sent to the Primate an assurance of 
 their acceptance of his terms, which were that 
 both parties should abstain from any further 
 
ANTONINA. 211 
 
 struggle for the ascendancy until an edict from 
 Theodosius determining the ultimate fate of the 
 Temple, should be applied for and obtained. 
 
 The truce once agreed on, the wide space before 
 the respited edifice was gradually cleared of its 
 occupants. Slowly and sadly the Archbishop and 
 his followers departed from the ancient walls 
 whose summits they had assaulted in vain ; and 
 when the sun went down, of the great multitude 
 congregated in the morning a few corpses were 
 all that remained. Within the sacred building, 
 Death and Repose ruled with the night, where 
 morning had brightly glittered on Life and Action. 
 The wounded, the wearied, and the cold, all now 
 lay hushed alike, fanned by the night-breezes that 
 wandered through the lofty porticoes, or soothed 
 by the obscurity that reigned over the silent halls. 
 Among the ranks of the Pagan devotees but one 
 man still toiled and thought. Round and round 
 the Temple, restless as a wild beast that is threat- 
 ened in his lair, watchful as a lonely spirit in a 
 city of strange tombs, w\andered the solitary and 
 brooding Ulpius. For him there was no rest of 
 
212: ANTONINA. 
 
 body— no tranquillity of mind. On the events of 
 the next few days hovered the fearful chance that 
 was soon, either for misery or happiness, to influ- 
 ence irretrievably the years of his future life. 
 Round and round the mighty walls he watched 
 with mechanical and useless anxiety. Every stone 
 in the building was eloquent to his lonely heart — 
 beautiful to his wild imagination. On those barren 
 structures stretched for him the loved and fertile 
 home ; there was the shrine for whose glory his in- 
 tellect had been enslaved, for whose honour his 
 youth had been sacrificed ! Round and round the 
 secret recesses and sacred courts he paced with 
 hurried footstep, cleansing with gentle and indus- 
 trious hand the stains of blood and the defilements 
 of warfare from the statues at his side. Sad, soli- 
 tary, thoughtful, as in the first days of his appren- 
 ticeship to the Gods, he now roved in the same 
 moonlit recesses where Macrinus had taught him 
 in his youth. As the menacing tumults of the day 
 had aroused his fierceness, so the stillness of the 
 quiet night awakened his gentleness. He had com- 
 batted for the Temple in the morning as a son for 
 
ANTONINA. 213 
 
 a parent, and he now watched over it at night as 
 a miser over his treasure, as a lover over his mis- 
 tress, as a mother over her child ! 
 
 The days passed on ; and at length the memor- 
 able morning arrived, which was to determine the 
 fate of the last temple that Christian fanaticism 
 had spared to the admiration of the world. At an 
 early hour of the morning, the diminished numbers 
 of the Pagan zealots met their re-inforced and 
 determined opponents — both sides being alike un- 
 armed — in the great square of Alexandria. The 
 Imperial rescript was then publicly read. It began 
 by assuring the Pagans, that their priest's plea for 
 protection for the Temple had received the same 
 consideration which had been bestowed on the 
 petition against the Gods, presented by the Chris- 
 tian Archbishop ; and ended by proclaiming the 
 commands of the Emperor, that Serapis and all 
 other idols in Alexandria should immediately be 
 destroyed. 
 
 The shout of triumph that followed the con- 
 clusion of the Imperial edict still rose from the 
 Christian ranks, when the advanced guard of the 
 
214 ANTONINA. 
 
 soldiers appointed to insure the execution of the 
 Emperor's designs appeared in the square. For a 
 few minutes the forsaken Pagans stood rooted to 
 the spot where they had assembled, gazing at 
 the warlike preparations around them in a stupor 
 of bewilderment and despair. Then as they re- 
 collected how diminished were their numbers, how 
 arduous had been their first defence against a few, 
 and how impossible would be a second defence 
 against many — from the boldest to the feeblest, a 
 panic seized on them ; and, regardless of Ulpius, 
 regardless of honour, regardless of the Gods, they 
 turned with one accord and fled from the place ! 
 
 With the flight of the Pagans the work of 
 demolition began. Even women and children 
 hurried to join in the welcome task of indis- 
 criminate destruction. No defenders on this 
 occasion barred the gates of the temple to the 
 Christian hosts. The sublime solitude of the 
 tenantless building was outraged and invaded in 
 an instant. Statues were broken, gold was carried 
 off, doors were splintered into fragments — but here 
 for a while the progress of demolition was delayed. 
 
ANTONINA. 215 
 
 Those to whom the labour of ruining the outward 
 structure had been confided, were less successful 
 than their neighbours who had pillaged its contents. 
 The ponderous stones of the pillars, the massive 
 sui-faces of the walls resisted the most vigorous 
 of their puny efforts, and forced them to remain 
 contented with mutilating that which they could 
 not destroy — with tearing off roofs, defacing 
 marbles, and demoHshing capitals. The rest of 
 the building remained uninjured, and grander even 
 now in the wildness of ruin than ever it had 
 been in the stateliness of perfection and strength. 
 But the most important achievement still 
 remained, th^ death-wound of Paganism was yet 
 to be struck, the idol of Serapis which had ruled 
 the hearts of millions, and was renowned in the 
 remotest corners of the empire — was to be des- 
 troyed ! A breathless silence pervaded the 
 Christian ranks as they filled the hall of the God. 
 A superstitious dread to which they had hitherto 
 thought themselves superior, overcame their 
 hearts, as a single soldier, bolder than his fellows, 
 mounted by a ladder to the head of the colossal 
 
216 ANTONINA. 
 
 statue, and struck at its cheek with an axe. The 
 blow had scarcely been dealt when a deep groan 
 was heard from the opposite wall of the apart- 
 ment, followed by a noise of retreating footsteps ; 
 and then all was silent again. For a few minutes 
 this incident stayed the feet of those who were 
 about to join their companion in the mutilation of 
 the idol, but after an interval their hesitation 
 vanished, they dealt blow after blow at the statue 
 and no more groans followed the strokes. In an 
 incredibly short space of time the image of Serapis 
 lay in great fragments on the marble floor. The 
 multitude seized on the limbs of the idol and 
 ran forth to drag them in triumph through the 
 streets. Yet a few minutes more, and the ruins 
 were untenanted, the Temple was silent, Paganism 
 was destroyed ! * 
 
 Throughout the ravaging course of the Christians 
 over the Temple they had been followed with 
 dogged perseverance, and at the same time with 
 the most perfect impunity, by the only Pagan 
 
 * Vide " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," chap, xxviii, 
 p. 443. 
 
ANTONINA. 217* 
 
 of all his brethren who had not sought 
 safety by flight. This man being acquainted with 
 every private passage and staircase in the sacred 
 building, was enabled to be secretly present at 
 each fresh act of demolition, in whatever part of 
 the edifice it might be perpetrated. From hall 
 to hall, and from room to room, he tracked with 
 noiseless step and glaring eye the movements of the 
 Christian mob, — now hiding himself behind a 
 pillar, now passing into concealed cavities in the 
 walls, now looking down from imperceptible fissures 
 in the roof; but whatever his situation, invariably 
 watching from it, with the same industry of atten- 
 tion, and the same silence of emotion, the minutest 
 acts of spoliation committed by the most humble 
 followers of the Christian ranks. It was only 
 when he entered with the victorious ravagers the 
 vast apartment occupied by the idol Serapis, that 
 the man's countenance began to give evidence of 
 the agony under which his heart was writhing 
 within him. He mounted a private staircase cut 
 in the hollow of the massive wall of the room, and 
 gaining a passage that ran round the extremities 
 
 VOL. I. L 
 
218 ANTONINA. 
 
 of the ceiling, looked through a sort of lattice, 
 concealed in the ornaments of the cornice. As 
 he gazed down and saw the soldier mounting, axe 
 in hand, to the idol's head, great drops of perspi- 
 ration trickled from his forehead. His hot, thick 
 breath hissed through his closed teeth, and his 
 hands strained at the strong metal supports of the 
 lattice, until they bent beneath his grasp. When 
 the stroke descended on the image he closed his 
 eyes. When the fragment detached by the blow 
 fell on the floor, a groan burst from his quivering 
 lips. For one moment more he glared down with 
 a gaze of horror upon the multitude at his feet, 
 and then with frantic speed he descended the 
 steep stairs by which he had mounted to the roof, 
 and fled from the Temple. 
 
 The same night this man was again seen by some 
 shepherds, whom curiosity led to visit the dese- 
 crated building, weeping bitterly in its ruined and 
 deserted porticos. As they approached to address 
 him, he raised his head, and with a supplicating 
 action signed to them to leave the place. For the 
 few moments during which he confronted them, 
 
ANTONINA. 219 
 
 the moonlight shone full upon his countenance, and 
 the shepherds, who had in former days attended 
 the ceremonies of the Temple, saw with astonish- 
 ment that the solitary mourner whose meditations 
 they had disturbed was no other than Ulpius the 
 Priest. 
 
 At the dawn of day these shepherds had again 
 occasion to pass the walls of the pillaged Temple. 
 Throughout the hours of the night the remem- 
 brance of the scene of unsolaced, unpartaken grief 
 that they had beheld — of the awful loneliness of 
 misery in which they had seen the heart-broken and 
 forsaken man, whose lightest w^ords they had once 
 delighted to revere — inspired them with a feeling of 
 pity for the deserted Pagan, widely at variance with 
 the spirit of persecution which the spurious Christi- 
 anity of their day would fain have instilled in the 
 bosoms of its humblest votaries. Bent on conso- 
 lation, anxious to afford help, these men, like the 
 Samaritan of old, went up at their own peril to 
 succour a brother in affliction. They searched 
 every portion of the empty building, but the object 
 
 of their sympathy was nowhere to be seen. They 
 
 l2 
 
220 ANTONINA. 
 
 called, but heard no answering sound, save the 
 dirging of the winds of early morning through the 
 ruined halls, which but a short time since had 
 resounded with the eloquence of the once illus- 
 trious Priest. Except a few night-birds, already 
 sheltered by the deserted edifice, not a living 
 being moved in what was once the temple of the 
 Eastern world. Ulpius was gone. 
 
 These events took place in the year 889. In 390, 
 Pagan ceremonies were made treason by the laws 
 throughout the whole Roman empire. 
 
 From that period, the scattered few who still 
 adhered to the ancient faith became divided into 
 three parties; each alike insignificant, whether 
 considered as openly or secretly inimical to the 
 new religion of the State at large. 
 
 The first party unsuccessfully endeavoured to 
 elude the laws prohibitory of sacrifices and divina- 
 tions, by concealing their religious ceremonies 
 under the form of convivial meetings. 
 
 The second preserved their ancient respect for 
 the theory of Paganism, but abandoned all hope 
 and intention of ever again accomplishing its 
 
ANTONINA. 221 
 
 practice. By such timely concessions, many were 
 enabled to preserve — and some even to attain — high 
 and lucrative employments as officers of the State. 
 
 The third retired to their homes, the voluntary 
 exiles of every religion ; resigning the practice of 
 Paganism as a necessity, and shunning the com- 
 munion of Christians as a matter of choice. 
 
 Such were the unimportant divisions into which 
 the last remnants of the once powerful Pagan 
 community now subsided ; but to none of them 
 was the ruined and degraded Ulpius ever attached. 
 
 For five weary years — dating from the epoch 
 of the prohibition of Paganism — he wandered 
 through the Empire, visiting in every country the 
 ruined shrines of his deserted worship — a friendless, 
 hopeless, solitary man ! 
 
 Throughout the whole of Europe and all of Asia 
 and the East that still belonged to Rome, he bent 
 his slow and toilsome course. In the fertile 
 valleys of Gaul, over the burning sands of Africa, 
 through the sun-bright cities of Spain, he tra- 
 velled — unfriended as a man under a curse, lonely 
 as a second Cain. Never for an instant did the 
 
222 ANTONINA. 
 
 remembrance of his ruined projects desert his 
 memory, or his mad determination to revive his 
 worship abandon his mind. At every relic of 
 Paganism however slight, that he encountered on 
 his way, he found a nourishment for his fierce 
 anguish, an employment for his vengeful thoughts. 
 Often, in the little villages, children were frightened 
 from their sports in a deserted temple, by the 
 apparition of his gaunt, rigid figure among the 
 tottering pillars, or the sound of his hollow voice 
 as he muttered to himself among the ruins of the 
 Pagan tombs. Often, in crowded cities, groups of 
 men, congregated to talk over their remembrances 
 of the fall of Paganism, found him listening at 
 their sides, and comforting them when they care- 
 lessly regretted their ancient faith, with a smiling 
 and whispered assurance that a time of restitution 
 would yet come. By all opinions and in all places 
 he was regarded as a harmless madman, whose 
 strange delusions and predilections were not to be 
 combatted, but to be indulged. Thus he wandered 
 through the Christian world ; regardless alike of 
 lapse of time and change of climate ; living within 
 
ANTONINA. 223 
 
 himself; mourning, as a luxury, over the fall of 
 his worship ; patient of wrongs, insults, and dis- 
 appointments ; watching for the opportunity that 
 he still persisted in believing was yet to arrive ; 
 holding by his fatal determination, with all the 
 recklessness of ambition and all the perseverance 
 of revenge. 
 
 The five years passed away unheeded, uncal- 
 culated, unregretted by Ulpius. For him, living 
 but in the past, hoping but for the future, space 
 held no obstacles — time was an oblivion. Years 
 pass as days, hours as moments, when the varying 
 emotions which mark their existence on the 
 memory, and distinguish their succession on the 
 dial of the heart, exist no longer either for happi- 
 ness or woe. Dead to all freshness of feeling, the 
 mind of Ulpius, during the whole term of his 
 wanderings, lay numbed beneath the one idea that 
 possessed it. It was only at the expiration of 
 those unheeded years, when the chances of travel 
 turned his footsteps towards Alexandria, that his 
 faculties burst from the long bondage which had 
 oppressed them. Then — when he passed through 
 
224 ANTONINA. 
 
 those gates which he had entered in former years 
 a proud ambitious boy, when he walked ungreeted 
 through the ruined Temple where he had once 
 lived illustrious and revered — his dull, cold thoughts 
 arose strong and vital within him. The spectacle 
 of the scene of his former glories, which might 
 have awakened despair in others, aroused the 
 dormant passions, emancipated the stifled energies 
 in him. The projects of vengeance and the visions 
 of restoration which he had brooded over for five 
 long years, now rose before him, as realised already 
 under the vivid influence of the desecrated scenes 
 around. As he stood beneath the shattered por- 
 ticos of the sacred place, not a stone crumbling at 
 his feet but rebuked him for his past inaction, 
 and strengthened him for daring, for conspiracy, 
 for revenge, in the service of the outraged gods. 
 The ruined temples he had visited in his gloomy 
 pilgrimages now became revived by his fancy ; as, 
 one by one, they rose on his toiling memory. 
 Broken pillars soared from the ground ; desecrated 
 idols re-occupied their vacant pedestals ; and he, 
 the exile and the mourner, stood forth once again 
 
AXTONINA. 225 
 
 — the ruler, the teacher, and the priest. The 
 time of restitution was come — though his under- 
 standing supplied him with no distinct projects, 
 his heart urged him to rush blindly on the execu- 
 tion of his reform. The moment had arrived — 
 Macrinus should yet be avenged ; the Temple 
 should at last be restored. 
 
 He descended into the city ; he hurried — neither 
 welcomed nor recognised — through the crowded 
 streets ; he entered the house of a man who had 
 once been his friend and colleague in the days 
 that were past ; and poured forth to him his wild 
 determinations and disjointed plans, entreating 
 his assistance, and promising him a glorious success. 
 But his old companion had become, by a timely 
 conversion to Christianity, a man of property and 
 reputation in Alexandria ; and he turned from 
 the friendless enthusiast with indignation and 
 contempt. Repulsed, but not disheartened, Ulpius 
 sought others whom he had known in his prosperity 
 and renown. They had all renounced their ancient 
 worship — they all received him with studied cold- 
 ness or careless disdain ; but he still persisted in 
 
226 ANTONINA. 
 
 his useless efforts. He blinded his eyes to their 
 contemptuous looks ; he shut his ears to their 
 derisive words. Persevering in his self-delusion, 
 he appointed them messengers to their brethren 
 in other countries ; captains of the conspiracy that 
 was to commence in Alexandria ; orators before 
 the people when the memorable revolution had once 
 begun. It was in vain that they refused all par- 
 ticipation in his designs, he left them as the 
 expressions of refusal rose to their Hps ; and hur- 
 ried elsewhere, as industrious in his efforts, as 
 devoted to his unwelcome mission, as if half the 
 population of the city had vowed themselves joy- 
 fully to aid him in his frantic attempt. 
 
 Thus, during the whole day, he continued his 
 labour of useless persuasion among those in the 
 city who had once been his friends. When the 
 evening came, he repaired, weary but not despon- 
 dent, to the earthly paradise that he was deter- 
 mined to regain — to the Temple where he had 
 once taught, and where he still imagined that he 
 was again destined to preside. Here, he pro- 
 ceeded, ignorant of the new laws, careless of dis- 
 
ANTONINA. 227 
 
 covery and danger, to ascertain by divination, as 
 in the days of old, whether failure or success 
 awaited him, ultimately, in his great design. 
 
 Meanwhile, the friends whose assistance Ulpius 
 had determined to extort, were far from remaining 
 inactive on their parts after the departure of the 
 aspiring priest. They remembered with terror 
 that the laws affected as severely those concealing 
 their knowledge of a Pagan intrigue, as those 
 actually engaged in directing a Pagan conspiracy ; 
 and their anxiety for their personal safety, over- 
 coming every consideration of the dues of honour, 
 or the claims of ancient friendship, they repaired 
 in a body to the Prefect of the city, and informed 
 him, with all the eagerness of apprehension, of the 
 presence of Ulpius in Alexandria, and of the cul- 
 pability of his proposed designs. 
 
 A search after the devoted Pagan was imme- 
 diately commenced. He was found the same night 
 before a ruined altar, brooding over the entrails 
 of an animal that he had just sacrificed. Further 
 proof of his guilt could not be required. He was 
 taken prisoner ; led forth the next morning to be 
 
228 ANTONINA. 
 
 judged, amid the execrations of the very populace 
 who had almost adored him once ; and condemned 
 the following day to suffer the penalty of death. 
 
 At the appointed hour the populace assembled 
 to behold the execution. To their indignation 
 and disappointment, however, when the officers of 
 the city appeared before the prison, it was only to 
 inform the spectators that the performance of the 
 fatal ceremony had been adjourned. After a 
 mysterious delay of some weeks, they were again 
 convened, not to witness the execution, but to 
 receive the extraordinary announcement that the 
 culprit's Ufe had been spared, and that his amended 
 sentence now condemned him to labour as a slave 
 for life, in the copper mines of Spain. 
 
 What powerful influence induced the Prefect 
 to risk the odium of reprieving a prisoner whose 
 guilt was so satisfactorily ascertained as that of 
 Ulpius, never was disclosed. Some declared that 
 the city magistrate was still at heart a Pagan, 
 and that he consequently shrunk from authorising 
 the death of a man who had once been the most 
 illustrious among the professors of the ancient 
 
ANTONINA. 229 
 
 creed. Others reported that Ulpius had secured 
 the leniency of his judges by acquainting them 
 with the position of one of those secret reposi- 
 tories of enormous treasure, supposed to exist be- 
 neath the foundations of the dismantled Temple 
 of Serapis. But the truth of either of these 
 rumours could never be satisfactorily proved. 
 Nothing more was accurately discovered than that 
 Ulpius was removed from Alexandria to the place 
 of earthly torment set apart for him by the zealous 
 authorities, at the dead of night, and that the 
 sentiy at the gate through which he departed 
 heard him mutter to himself as he was hurried 
 onward, that his divinations had prepared him for 
 failure, but that the great day of Pagan restora- 
 tion would yet arrive. 
 
 * * :*c * ^ 
 
 In the year 407, twelve years after the events 
 above narrated, Ulpius entered the city of Rome. 
 
 He had not advanced far before the gaiety and 
 confusion in the streets appeared completely to 
 bewilder him. He hastened to the nearest pubhc 
 garden that he could perceive, and avoiding the 
 
230 ANTONINA. 
 
 frequented paths, flung himself down, apparently 
 fainting with exhaustion, at the foot of a tree. 
 
 For some time he lay on the shady resting-place 
 which he had chosen, gasping painfully for breath, 
 his frame ever and anon shaken to its centre by 
 sudden spasms, and his lips quivering with an 
 agitation which he vainly endeavoured to suppress. 
 So changed was his aspect, that the guards who 
 had removed him from Alexandria, wretched as 
 was his appearance even then, would have found 
 it impossible to recognise him now as the same 
 man, whom they had formerly abandoned to 
 slavery in the mines of Spain. The effluvia ex- 
 haled from the copper ore in which he had been 
 buried for twelve years, had not only withered the 
 flesh upon his bones, but had imparted to its sur- 
 face a livid hue, almost death-like in its dulness. 
 His limbs, wasted by age and distorted by suffer- 
 ing, bent and trembled beneath him, and his form, 
 once so majestic in its noble proportions, was now 
 so crooked and misshapen that whoever beheld 
 him could only have imagined that he must have 
 been deformed from his birth. Of the former 
 
ANTONINA. 231 
 
 man no characteristic remained but the expression 
 of the stern, mournful eyes ; and these^ the truthful 
 interpreters of the indomitable mind whose emo- 
 tions they seemed created to express, preserved, 
 unaltered by suffering and unimpaired by time, the 
 same look, partly of reflection, partly of defiance, 
 and partly of despair, which had marked them in 
 those past days when the Temple was destroyed 
 and the congregations of the Pagans dispersed. 
 
 But the repose at this moment demanded by 
 his worn-out body was even yet denied to it by his 
 untamed, unwearied mind ; and as the voice of his 
 old delusion spoke within him again, the devoted 
 Priest rose from his solitary resting-place, and 
 looked forth upon the great city, whose new 
 worship he was vowed to overthrow. 
 
 " By years of patient watchfulness," he whis- 
 pered to himself, " have I succeeded in escaping 
 successfully from my dungeon among the mines. 
 Yet a little more cunning, a little more endurance, 
 a little more vigilance, and I shall still live to 
 people, by my own exertions, the deserted temples 
 of Rome ! '' 
 
232 ANTONINA. 
 
 As he spoke, he emerged from the grove into 
 the street. The joyous sunh^ht — a stranger to 
 him for years — shone warmly down upon his face, 
 as if to welcome him to liberty and the world. 
 The sounds of gay laughter rang in his ears, as if 
 to woo him back to the blest enjoyments and 
 amenities of life ; but Nature's influence, and 
 man^s example, were now silent alike to his 
 lonely heart. Over its dreary wastes still reigned 
 the ruthless ambition that had exiled love from 
 his youth, and friendship from his manhood, 
 and that was destined to end its mission of 
 destruction by banishing tranquillity from his 
 age. Scowling fiercely at all around and above 
 him, he sought the loneliest and shadiest streets. 
 Solitude had now become a necessity to his heart. 
 The "great gulph*" of his unshared aspirations 
 had long since socially separated him for ever 
 from his fellow-men. He thought, laboured, and 
 suffered for himself alone. 
 
 To describe the years of unrewarded labour and 
 unalleviated hardship endured by Ulpius in the 
 place of his punishment ; to dwell on the day that 
 
ANTONINA. 233 
 
 brought with it — whatever the season in the world 
 above — the same unvarying inheritance of exertion 
 and fatigue ; to chronicle the history of night 
 after night of broken slumber one hour, of weary- 
 ing thought the next, would be to produce a 
 picture, from the mournful monotony of which, the 
 attention of the reader would recoil with disgust. 
 It will be here sufi&cient to observe, that the influ- 
 ence of the same infatuation which had nerved 
 him to the defence of the assaulted Temple, and 
 encouraged him to attempt his ill-planned restora- 
 tion of Paganism, had preserved him through 
 sufferings under which stronger and younger men 
 would have sunk for ever ; had prompted his 
 determination to escape from his slavery ; and had 
 now brought him to Rome, — old, forsaken, and 
 feeble as he was, to risk new perils, and suffer 
 new afflictions, for the cause to which, body and 
 soul, he had ruthlessly devoted himself for ever. 
 
 Urged, therefore, by his miserable delusion, he 
 had now entered a city where even his name was 
 unknown, faithful to his frantic project of opposing 
 himself as a helpless, solitary man, against the 
 
234 ANTONINA. 
 
 people and government of an Empire. During his 
 term of slavery, regardless of his advanced years, 
 he had arranged a series of projects, the gradual 
 execution of which would have demanded the 
 advantages of a long and vigorous life. He no 
 more desired, as in his former attempt at 
 Alexandria, to precipitate at all hazards the 
 success of his designs. He was now prepared to 
 watch, wait, plot and contrive, for years on years ; 
 he was resigned to be contented with the poorest 
 and slowest advancement — to be encouraged by 
 the smallest prospect of ultimate triumph. Acting 
 under this determination, he started his project, 
 by devoting all that remained of his enfeebled 
 energies to cautiously informing himself, by every 
 means in his power, of the private, political, and 
 religious sentiments of all men of influence in 
 Rome. Wherever there was a popular assemblage, 
 he attended it to gather the scandalous gossip of 
 the day; wherever there was a chance of over- 
 hearing a private conversation, he contrived to 
 listen to it unobserved. About the doors of 
 taverns and the haunts of discharged servants, he 
 
ANTOXINA. 235 
 
 lurked noiseless as a shadow, attentive alike to the 
 careless revelations of intoxication, or the scurrility 
 of malignant slaves. Day after day passed on, 
 and still saw him devoted to his occupation, 
 (which, servile as it was in itself, was to bis eyes 
 ennobled by its lofty end,) until at the expiration 
 of some months, he found himself in possession of 
 a vague and inaccurate fund of information, which 
 he stored up as a priceless treasure in his mind. 
 He next discovered the name and abode of every 
 nobleman in Rome, suspected even of the most 
 careless attachment to the ancient form of worship. 
 He attended Christian churches, mastered the 
 intricacies of different sects, and estimated the 
 importance of contending schisms ; gaining this 
 collection of heterogeneous facts under the com- 
 bined disadvantages of poverty, solitude, and age ; 
 dependent for support on the poorest public 
 charities, and for shelter on the meanest public 
 asylums. Every conclusion that he drew from all 
 he learned, partook of the sanguine character of 
 the fatal self-deception which had embittered his 
 whole life. He believed that the dissensions 
 
236 ANTONINA. 
 
 which he saw raging in the church would, ere long, 
 effect the destruction of Christianity itself; that 
 when such a period should arrive, the public mind 
 would require but the guidance of some superior 
 intellect to return to its old religious predilections; 
 and that to lay the foundation for effecting in such 
 a manner the desired revolution, it was necessary 
 for him, — impossible though it might seem, in his 
 present degraded condition, — to gain access to the 
 disaffected nobles of Rome, and discover the 
 secret of acquiring such an influence over them as 
 would enable him to infect them with his enthu- 
 siasm, and fire them with his determination. 
 Greater difficulties even than these had been 
 overcome by other men. Solitary individuals had, 
 ere this, originated revolutions. The gods would 
 favour him ; his own cunning would protect him. 
 Yet a little more patience, — a little more deter- 
 mination, and he might still, after all his mis- 
 fortunes, be assured of success ! 
 
 It was about this period that he first heard, while 
 pursuing his investigations, of an obscure man, who 
 had suddenly arisen to undertake a reformation in 
 
ANTONINA. 237 
 
 the Christian church ; whose declared aim was to 
 rescue the new worship from that very degeneracy, 
 on the fatal progress of which rested all his hopes 
 of triumph. It was reported that this man had 
 been for some time devoted to his reforming 
 labours, but that the difficulties attendant on the 
 task that he had appointed for himself, had 
 hitherto prevented him from attaining all the 
 notoriety essential to the satisfactory prosecution 
 of his plans. On hearing this rumour, Ulpius 
 immediately joined the few who attended the 
 new orators discourses, and then heard enough 
 to convince him that he listened to the most 
 determined zealot for Christianity in the city of 
 Rome. To gain this man's confidence, to frustrate 
 every effort that he might make in his new voca- 
 tion, to ruin his credit with his hearers, and to 
 threaten his personal safety by betraying his 
 inmost secrets to his powerful enemies in the 
 Church, were determinations instantly adopted by 
 the Pagan as duties demanded by the exigencies of 
 his creed . From that moment he seized every oppor- 
 tunity of favourably attracting the new reformer's 
 
238 ANTONINA. 
 
 attention to himself, and, as the reader already 
 knows, he was at length rewarded for his cunning 
 and perseverance by being received into the house- 
 hold of the charitable and unsuspicious Numerian, 
 as a pious convert to the Christianity of the early 
 church. 
 
 Once installed under Numerian's roof, the 
 treacherous Pagan saw in the Christian's daughter, 
 an instrument admirably adapted, in his unscru- 
 pulous hands, for forwarding his wild project of 
 obtaining the ear of a Roman of power and 
 station who was disaffected to the established 
 worship. Among the patricians of whose anti- 
 Christian predilections report had informed him, 
 was Numerian'^s neighbour, Vetranio the senator. 
 To such a man, renowned for his life of luxury, 
 a girl so beautiful as Antonina would be a bribe 
 rich enough to enable him to extort any promise 
 required, as a reward for betraying her while under 
 the protection of her father's house. In addition 
 to this advantage to be drawn from her ruin, was 
 the certainty that her loss would so affect Numerian, 
 as to render him, for a time at least, incapable of 
 
ANTONINA. 239 
 
 pursuing his labours in the cause of Christianity. 
 Fixed then in his detestable purpose, the ruthless 
 priest patiently awaited the opportunity of com- 
 mencing his machinations. Nor did he watch in 
 vain. The victim innocently fell into the very 
 trap that he had prepared for her, when she 
 first listened to the music of Vetranio^'s lute, 
 and permitted her treacherous guardian to become 
 the friend, who concealed her disobedience from 
 her father's ear. After that first fatal step every 
 day brought the projects of Ulpius nearer to 
 success. The long-sought interview with the 
 senator was at length obtained, the engagement 
 imperatively demanded on the one side, w^as, as 
 we have already related, carelessly accepted on 
 the other ; the day that was to bring success to 
 the schemes of the betrayer, and degradation to 
 the honour of the betrayed, was appointed ; 
 and once more the cold heart of the fanatic 
 warmed to the touch of joy. No doubts upon the 
 validity of his engagement with Vetranio ever 
 entered his mind. He never imagined that the 
 powerful senator could with perfect impunity 
 
240 ANTONTNA. 
 
 deny him the impracticable assistance he had 
 demanded as his reward, and thrust him as an 
 ignorant madman from his palace gates. Firmly 
 and sincerely he believed that Vetranio was so 
 satisfied with his readiness in pandering to his 
 profligate designs, and so dazzled by the prospect 
 of the glory which would attend success in the 
 great enterprise, that he would gladly hold to 
 the performance of his promise whenever it should 
 be required of him. In the meantime the work 
 was already begun. Numerian was, even now, 
 through his agency, watched by the spies of a 
 jealous and unscrupulous Church. Feuds, schisms, 
 treacheries, and dissensions, marched bravely 
 onward through the Christian ranks. All things 
 combined to make it certain that the time was 
 near at hand when, through his exertions and the 
 friendly senator's help, the restoration of Paganism 
 might be assured. 
 
 With the widest diversity of pursuit and differ- 
 ence of design, there was still a strange and 
 mysterious analogy between the temporary posi- 
 tions of Ulpius and Numerian. One was prepared 
 
ANTONINA. 241 
 
 to be a martyr for the Temple ; the other to be a 
 martyr for the Church. Both were enthusiasts in 
 an unwelcome cause ; both had suffered more than 
 a life's wonted share of affliction ; and both were 
 old — passing irretrievably from their fading pre- 
 sent on earth, to the eternal future awaiting them 
 in the unknowm spheres beyond. 
 
 But here — with their position — the comparison 
 between them ends. The Christian's principle of 
 action, drawn from the Divinity he served, was 
 love : the Pagan's, born of the superstition that 
 was destroying him, was hate. The one laboured 
 for mankind ; the other for himself. And thus, 
 the aspirations of Numerian, founded on the 
 general good, nourished by offices of kindness, 
 and nobly directed to a generous end, might lead 
 him into indiscretion, but could never degrade 
 him into crime — might trouble the serenity of his 
 life, but could never deprive him of the consi- 
 deration of hope. While, on the contrary, the 
 ambition of Ulpius, originating in revenge and 
 directed to destruction, exacted cruelty from 
 his heart, and duplicity from his mind ; and, 
 
 VOL. I. M 
 
242 ANTONINA. 
 
 as the reward for his service, mocked him alter- 
 nately throughout his whole life with delusion 
 and despair. 
 
 3|* 5|S ^ ?JC ^ 
 
 And now, ere we proceed further, let us view 
 that solitary old man — the history of whose priest- 
 hood has drawn to a close — musing over his pitiless 
 projects, in the gloomy retreat to which he betook 
 himself when his victim had disappeared from his 
 sight, bearing to her chamber — whose purity he 
 dreads not to defile — the fragment of her broken 
 lute. Let us think of him in his childhood, as 
 fresh from his Creator's hands, docile and affec- 
 tionate, ready to learn and happy to obey, gifted 
 with all the capacities for good, provided with all 
 the perceptions for happiness — and then let us 
 look on him in his age as warped by the inter- 
 ference of man. Behold him sitting alone, with 
 no children to play round his knees ; no remem- 
 brances of past loves and past kindnesses to gild 
 his gloomy Present ; no watchful friends, no 
 heavenward aspirations to disperse the terrors of 
 the death-bed prospect which already lowers before 
 
ANTONINA. 243 
 
 him. That crooked, tottering body has travelled 
 through many nations, but has never once set 
 forward on any mission of good. Those stern, 
 dreary eyes have glared in anger, and sparkled in 
 disdain ; but years have passed, and no pity has 
 softened them, no tears have stood in their sunken 
 depths. Even now, as he looks forth on the sky, 
 the moonlight that trembles on his withered cheeks 
 holds no communion with his loveless heart ; and 
 the heaven that spreads above him, beautiful 
 though it now is in its night adornment of soft, 
 transparent shade, is void and speechless to his 
 unheedful mind. His thoughts are of past injuries 
 and future vengeance ; of that treachery whose 
 beginning is to be signalled by the dawn of day ; 
 of the trusting father and innocent daughter, 
 whose happiness he can wreck without remorse, 
 at the bidding of the evil delusion which has held 
 prisoned his better faculties for life. Such is he 
 now — in heart and soul chained fast to his mon- 
 strous end ; in body a ruin, and in mind a 
 deformity. The education that perverted his child- 
 hood, the aspirations that deluded his youth, and 
 
 M 2 
 
244 ANTONINA. 
 
 the ambition that degraded his manhood, have 
 completed their work ; and now, the old age of 
 crime is fast smoothing the way to the last conse- 
 quence of all — the death of despair.* 
 
 * For the various historical events mentioned in this Chapter, 
 see " Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE BEDCHAMBER. 
 
 It is now time to resume our chronicle of the 
 eventful night, which marked the destruction of 
 Antonina's lute and the conspiracy against Anto- 
 nina's honour. 
 
 The gates of Vetranio's palace were closed, and 
 the noises in it were all hushed, the banquet was 
 overj the triumph of the Nightingale Sauce had 
 been achieved, and the day-break was already 
 glimmering in the eastern sky, when the senator s 
 favoured servant, the freedman Carrio, drew back 
 the shutter of the porter's lodge, where he had 
 been dozing since the conclusion of the feast, and 
 looked out lazily into the street. The dull, faint 
 light of dawn was now strengthening slowly over 
 the lonely roadway and on the walls of the lofty 
 
246 
 
 ANTONINAc 
 
 houses. Of the groups of idlers of the lowest class 
 who had assembled during the evening in the 
 street, to snuff the fragrant odours which steamed 
 afar from Vetranio''s kitchens, not one remained; 
 men, women, and children had long since departed 
 to seek shelter wherever they could find it, and to 
 fatten their lean bodies on what had been 
 charitably bestowed on them of the coarser relics 
 of the banquet. The mysterious solitude and 
 tranquillity of day-break in a great city prevailed 
 over all things. Nothing impressed, however, by 
 the peculiar and solemn attraction of the scene at 
 this moment, the freedman apostrophised the 
 fresh morning air, as it blew over him, in strong 
 terms of disgust, and even ventured, in lower 
 tones, to rail against his master's uncomfortable 
 fancy for being awakened after a feast at the 
 approach of dawn. Far too well aware, neverthe- 
 less, of the necessity of yielding the most impHcit 
 obedience to the commands he had received, to 
 resign himself any longer to the pleasant temp- 
 tations of repose, Carrio, after yawning, rubbing 
 his eyes, and indulging for a few moments more in 
 
ANTONINA. 247 
 
 the luxury of complaint, set forth in earnest to 
 follow the corridors leading to the interior of 
 the palace, and to awaken Vetranio without 
 further delay. 
 
 He had not advanced more than a few steps, 
 when a proclamation written in letters of gold on 
 a blue-coloured board, and hung against the wall 
 at his side, attracted his attention. This public 
 notice, which delayed his progress at the very 
 outfiCt, and which was intended for the special 
 edification of all the inhabitants of Rome, was 
 thus expressed : — 
 
 " On this day, and for ten days following, 
 
 THE 'affairs of OUR PaTRON OBLIGE HIM TO BE 
 ABSENT FROM RoME."" 
 
 Here the proclamation ended, without descend- 
 ing to particulars. It had been put forth, in 
 accordance with the easy fashion of the age, to 
 answer at once all applications at Vetranio's 
 palace, during the senator's absence. Although 
 the colouring of the board, the writing of the 
 letters, and the composition of the sentence were 
 the work of his own ingenuity, the worthy Carrio 
 
248 ANTONINA. 
 
 could not prevail upon himself to pass the procla- 
 mation without contemplating its magnificence 
 anew. For some time he stood regarding it with 
 the same expression of lofty and complacent appro- 
 bation, which we see in these modern days, illumi- 
 nating the countenance of a connoisseur before one 
 of his own old pictures, which he has bought as a 
 great bargain ; or dawning over the bland features 
 of a linendraper, as he surveys from the pavement 
 his morning's arrangement of the window of the 
 shop. All things, however, have their limits, even 
 a man's approval of an effort of his own skill. 
 Accordingly, after a prolonged review of the pro- 
 clamation, some faint ideas of the necessity of 
 immediately obeying his master's commands re- 
 vived in the mind of the judicious Carrio, and 
 counselled him to turn his steps at once in the 
 direction of the palace sleeping-apartments. 
 
 Greatly wondering what new caprice had induced 
 the senator to contemplate leaving Rome at the 
 dawn of day — for Vetranio had divulged to no 
 one the object of his departure — the freedman 
 cautiously entered his master's bedchamber. He 
 
ANTONINA . 249 
 
 drew aside the ample silken curtains suspended 
 around and over the sleeping couch, from the hands 
 of Graces and Cupids sculptured in marble ; but 
 the statues surrounded an empty bed. Vetranio 
 was not there. Carrio next entered the bath- 
 room ; the perfumed water was steaming in its 
 long marble basin ; the soft wrapping-cloths lay 
 ready for use ; the attendant slave, with his 
 instruments of ablution, waited, half asleep, in his 
 accustomed place ; but here also no signs of the 
 master's presence appeared. Somewhat perplexed, 
 the freedman examined several other apartments. 
 He found guests, dancing girls, parasites, poets, 
 painters — a motley crew — occupying every kind of 
 dormitory, and all peacefully engaged in sleeping 
 off the effects of the wine they had drunk at the 
 banquet ; but the great object of his search still 
 eluded him as before. At last it occurred to him 
 that the senator, in an excess of convivial enthu- 
 siasm and jovial hospitality, might yet be detain- 
 ing some favoured guest at the table of the feast. 
 Pausing, therefore, at some carved doors which 
 stood ajar at one extremity of a spacious hall, he 
 
 M 3 
 
5^50 ANTONINA. 
 
 pushed them open, and hurriedly entered the 
 banquetting-room beyond. 
 
 A soft, dim, luxurious light reigned over this 
 apartment, which now presented, as far as the eye 
 could discern, an aspect of confusion that was 
 at once graceful and picturesque. Of the various 
 lamps, of every variety of pattern, hanging from 
 the ceiling, but few remained alight. From those, 
 however, which were still unextinguished, there 
 shone a mild brightness, admirably adapted to 
 display the objects immediately around them. 
 The golden garlands, and the alabaster pots of 
 sweet ointment, which had been suspended before 
 the guests during the banquet, still hung from the 
 painted ceiling. On the massive table, composed 
 partly of ebony and partly of silver, yet lay in the 
 wildest confusion, fragments of gastronomic deli- 
 cacies, grotesque dinner-services, vases of flowers, 
 musical instruments, and crystal dice ; while tower- 
 ing over all, rose the glittering dish which had 
 contained the nightingales consumed by the feast- 
 ers, with the four golden Cupids, which had 
 spouted over them that illustrious invention — the 
 
ANTONINA. 251 
 
 Nightingale Sauce. Beyond the couches, of violet 
 and rose-colour, surrounding the table, the per- 
 fumed and gaily-tinted powders that had been 
 strewn over the marble floor were perceptible 
 for a few yards ; but beyond this point nothing 
 more was distinctly distinguishable. The eye 
 roved do\vn the sides of the glorious chamber, 
 catching dim glimpses of gorgeous draperies, 
 crowded statues, and marble columns, but dis- 
 cerning nothing accurately, until it reached the 
 half-opened w^indows, and rested upon the fresh 
 dewy verdure, now softly perceptible in the shady 
 gardens without. There — waving in the morning 
 breezes, charged on every leaf with their burden 
 of pure and welcome moisture — rose the lofty pine 
 trees, basking in the recurrence of the new day\s 
 beautiful and undying youth, and rising in reprov- 
 ing contrast before the exhausted allurements of 
 luxury, and the perverted creations of art, which 
 burdened the polluted tables of the hall within. 
 
 After a hasty survey of the apartment, the freed- 
 man appeared to be on the point of quitting it in 
 despair, when the noise of a falling dish, followed 
 
252 ANTONINA. 
 
 by several partly suppressed and wholly confused 
 exclamations of affright, caught his ear. He once 
 more approached the banquetting table, retrimmed 
 a lamp that hung near him, and taking it in his 
 hand passed to the side of the room whence the 
 disturbance proceeded. A hideous little negro 
 staring in ludicrous terror at a silver oven, half 
 filled with bread, which had just fallen beside him, 
 was the first object he discovered. A few paces 
 beyond the negro reposed a beautiful boy, crowned 
 with vine leaves and ivy, still sleeping by the side 
 of his lyre; and further yet, stretched in an uneasy 
 slumber on a silken couch, lay the identical object 
 of the freedman's search — the illustrious author of 
 the Nightingale Sauce. 
 
 Immediately above the sleeping senator hung 
 his portrait, in which he was modestly represented 
 as rising by the assistance of Minerva to the top 
 of Parnassus, the nine Muses standing round him 
 rejoicing. At his feet reposed a magnificent white 
 cat, whose head rested in all the luxurious laziness 
 of satiety on the edge of a golden saucer half 
 filled with dormice stewed in milk. The most 
 
ANTONINA. 253 
 
 indubitable evidences of the night's debauch ap- 
 peared in Vetranio's disordered dress and flushed 
 countenance, as the freedman regarded him. For 
 some minutes the worthy Carrio stood uncertain 
 whether to awaken his master or not, deciding 
 finally, however, on obeying the commands he had 
 received, and disturbing the slumbers of the wearied 
 voluptuary before him. To effect this purpose it 
 was necessary to call in the aid of the singing-boy, 
 for by a refinement of luxury, Vetranio had 
 forbidden his attendants to awaken him by any 
 other method than the agency of musical sounds. 
 
 With some difficulty the boy was sufficiently 
 aroused to comprehend the service that was re- 
 quired of him. For a short time the notes of the 
 lyre sounded in vain. At last, when the melody 
 took a louder and more martial character, the 
 sleeping Patrician slowly opened his eyes, and 
 stared vacantly around him. 
 
 " My respected patron" — said the polite Carrio, 
 in apologetic tones — " commanded that I should 
 awaken him with the dawn ; the daybreak has 
 already appeared." 
 
254 ANTONINA. 
 
 When the freed-man had ceased speaking, 
 Vetranio sat up on the couch, called for a basin of 
 water, dipped his fingers in the refreshing liquid, 
 dried them abstractedly on the long silky curls of 
 the singing-boy who stood beside him, gazed about 
 him once more, repeated interrogatively the word 
 " Daybreak," and sunk gently back upon his couch. 
 We are grieved to confess it — but the author of 
 the Nightingale Sauce was moderately inebriated. 
 
 A short pause followed, during which the freed- 
 man and the singing-boy stared upon each other 
 in mutual perplexity. At length the one resumed 
 his address of apology, and the other his efforts on 
 the lyre. Once more, after an interval, the eyes 
 of Vetranio lazily unclosed, and this time he began 
 to speak ; but his thoughts — if thoughts they 
 could be called — were as yet wholly occupied by 
 the "table-talk" at the past night's banquet. 
 
 " The ancient Egyptians — oh, sprightly and 
 enchanting Camilla, — were a wise nation ! " mur- 
 mured the senator drowsily. " I am myself de- 
 scended from the ancient Egyptians ; and, therefore, 
 I hold in high veneration that cat in your lap, and 
 
ANTONIXA. 255 
 
 all cats besides. Herodotus — an historian whose 
 works I feel a certain gratification in publicly men- 
 tioning as good — informs us, that w^hen a cat died 
 in the dwelling of an ancient Egyptian, the owner 
 shaved his eyebrows as a mark of grief, embalmed 
 the defunct animal in a consecrated house, and 
 carried it to be interred in a considerable city of 
 Lower Egypt, called ' Bubastis' — an Egyptian 
 word which I have discovered to mean The 
 Sepulchre of all the Cats; whence it is scarcely 
 erroneous to infer — " 
 
 At this point the speaker's powers of recollection 
 and articulation suddenly failed him, and Carrio — 
 who had listened with perfect gravity to his master's 
 oration upon cats — took immediate advantage of 
 the opportunity now afforded him to speak again. 
 
 " The equipage which my patron was pleased to 
 command to carry him to Aricia," said he, with a 
 strong emphasis on the last word, " now stands in 
 readiness at the private gate of the palace 
 gardens." 
 
 As he heard the word " Aricia," the senator's 
 powers of recollection and perception seemed sud- 
 
256 ANTONINA. 
 
 denly to return to him. Among that high order 
 of drinkers who can imbibe to the point of perfect 
 enjoyment, and stop short scientifically before the 
 point of perfect oblivion, Vetranio occupied an 
 exalted rank. The wine he had swallowed during 
 the night had disordered his memory and slightly 
 troubled his self-possession, but had not deprived 
 him of his understanding. There was nothing 
 plebeian even in his debauchery ; there was an art 
 and a refinement in his very excesses. 
 
 " Aricia — Aricia," he repeated to himself, " ah, 
 the villa that Julia lent to me at Ravenna ! The 
 pleasures of the table must have obscured for a 
 moment the image of my beautiful pupil of other 
 days, which now revives before me again, as 
 Love resumes the dominion that Bacchus usurped ! 
 My excellent Carrio," he continued, speaking to 
 the freed-man, ^' you have done perfectly right in 
 awakening me ; delay not a moment more in 
 ordering my bath to be prepared, or my man- 
 monster Ulpius, the king of conspirators and high- 
 priest of all that is mysterious, will wait for me in 
 vain ! And you, Glyco/' he pursued when Carrio 
 
ANTONINA. 257 
 
 had departed, addressing the singing-boy, " array 
 yourself for a journey, and wait with my equipage 
 at the garden gate. I shall require you to accom- 
 pany me in my expedition to Aricia. But first, 
 oh gifted and valued songster, let me reward 
 you for the harmonious symphony that has just 
 awakened me. Of what rank of my musicians are 
 you, at present, Glyco ? " 
 
 " Of the fifth," repHed the boy. 
 
 " Were you bought, or born in my house ? " 
 asked Vetranio. 
 
 " Neither ; but bequeathed to you by Geta's 
 testament," rejoined the gratified Glyco. 
 
 " I advance you/' continued Vetranio, '' to the 
 privileges and the pay of the first rank of my 
 musicians ; and I give you, as a proof of my con- 
 tinued favour, this ring. In return for these 
 obligations, I desire you to keep secret whatever 
 concerns my approaching expedition ; to employ 
 your softest music in soothing the ear of a young 
 girl who will accompany us — in calming her terrors 
 if she is afraid, in drying her tears if she weeps ; 
 and finally, to exercise your voice and your lute 
 
258 ANTONINA. 
 
 incessantly, in uniting the name ' Antonina' to the 
 sweetest harmonies of sound that your imagination 
 can suggest." 
 
 Pronouncing these words with an easy and 
 benevolent smile, and looking round complacently 
 on the display of luxurious confusion about him, 
 Vetranio retired to the bath that was to prepare 
 him for his approaching triumph. 
 
 Meanwhile a scene of a very different nature 
 was proceeding without, at Numerian's garden- 
 gate. Here were no singing boys, no freedmen, 
 no profusion of rich treasures, — here appeared 
 only the solitary and deformed figure of Ulpius, 
 half-hidden among surrounding trees, while he 
 waited at his appointed post. As time wore on, 
 and still Vetranio did not appear, the Pagan's 
 self-possession began to desert him. He moved 
 restlessly backwards and forwards over the soft 
 dewy grass, sometimes in low tones calling upon 
 his gods to hasten the tardy footsteps of the liber- 
 tine patrician, who was to be made the instrument 
 of restoring to the Temple the worship of other 
 days, — sometimes cursing the reckless delay of the 
 
ANTONINA. 259 
 
 senator, or exulting in the treachery by which he 
 madly believed his ambition was at last to be 
 fulfilled ; but still, whatever his words or thoughts, 
 wrought up to the same pitch of fierce, fanatic 
 enthusiasm which had strengthened him for the 
 defence of his idols at Alexandria, and had nerved 
 him against the torment and misery of years, in 
 his slavery in the copper mines of Spain. 
 
 The precious moments were speeding irrevocably 
 onwards. His impatience was rapidly changing 
 to rage and despair, as he strained his eyes for 
 the last time in the direction of the palace gar- 
 dens, and now at length discerned a white robe 
 among the distant trees. Vetranio was rapidly 
 approaching him. 
 
 Restored by his bath, no effect of the night's 
 festivity but its exhilaration remained in the sena- 
 tor's brain. But for a slight uncertainty in his 
 gait, and an unusual vacancy in his smile, the 
 elegant gastronome might now have appeared to 
 the closest observer guiltless of the influence of 
 intoxicating drinks. He advanced radiant with 
 exultation, prepared for conquest, to the place 
 
260 ANTONINA. 
 
 where Ulpius awaited him, and was about to 
 address the Pagan with that satirical famiharity 
 so fashionable among the nobles of Rome in their 
 communications with the people, when the object 
 of his intended pleasantries sternly interrupted 
 him, saying, in tones more of command than of 
 advice, " Be silent ! If you would succeed in your 
 purpose, follow me without uttering a word ! " 
 
 There was something so fierce and determined 
 in the tones of the old man's voice — low, tremu- 
 lous and husky though they were — as he uttered 
 these words, that the bold, confident senator in- 
 stinctively held his peace as he followed his stern 
 guide into Numerian's house. Avoiding the re- 
 gular entrance, which at that early hour of the 
 morning was necessarily closed, Ulpius conducted 
 the patrician through a small wicket into the sub- 
 terranean apartment, or rather outhouse, which 
 was his customary, though comfortless, retreat 
 in his leisure hours, and which was hardly ever 
 entered by the other members of the Christian's 
 household. 
 
 From the low, arched, brick ceiling of this 
 
ANTONINA. 261 
 
 place, hung one earthenware lamp whose light, 
 small and tremulous, left all the corners of the 
 apartment in perfect obscurity. The thick but- 
 tresses that projected inwards from the walls, made 
 visible by their prominence, displayed on their sur- 
 faces rude representations of idols and temples 
 drawn in chalk and covered with strange, myste- 
 rious hieroglyphics. On a block of stone which 
 served as a table lay some fragments of small 
 statues, which Vetranio recognised as having be- 
 longed to the old, accredited representations of 
 Pagan idols. Over the sides of the table itself 
 were scrawled in Latin characters these two words, 
 "Serapis/' " Macrinus," and about its base lay 
 some pieces of torn, soiled linen, which still re- 
 tained enough of their former character both in 
 shape, size and colour, to convince Vetranio that 
 they had once served as the vestments of a Pagan 
 priest. Further than this the senators observa- 
 tion did not carry him, for the close, almost 
 mephitic atmosphere of the place already began 
 to affect him unfavourably. He felt a suffocating 
 sensation in his throat, and a dizziness in his head. 
 
262 ANTONINA. 
 
 The restorative influence of his recent bath 
 declined rapidly. The fumes of the wine he had 
 drank in the night, far from having been as he 
 imagined permanently dispersed, again mounted to 
 his head. He was obliged to lean against the stone 
 table to preserve his equilibrium, as he faintly 
 desired the Pagan to shorten their sojourn in his 
 miserable retreat. 
 
 Without even noticing the senator's request, 
 Ulpius hurriedly proceeded to erase the drawings 
 on the buttresses and the inscriptions on the table. 
 Then collecting the fragments of statues and the 
 pieces of linen, he deposited them in a hiding-place 
 in the corner of the apartment. This done, he 
 returned to the stone against which Vetranio 
 supported himself, and for a few minutes silently 
 regarded the senator with a firm, earnest and 
 penetrating gaze. 
 
 A dark suspicion that he had betrayed himself 
 into the hands of a villain, who was then plotting 
 some atrocious project connected with his safety 
 or honour, began to rise on the senator's bewildered 
 brain, as he unwiUingly submitted to the pene- 
 
ANTONINA. 263 
 
 trating examination of the Pagan's glance. At 
 that moment, however, the withered lips of the 
 old man slowly parted, and he began to speak. 
 Whether as he looked on Vetranio's disturbed 
 countenance, and marked his unsteady gait, the 
 heart of Ulpius, for the first time since his intro- 
 duction to the senator, misgave him when he 
 thought of their monstrous engagement ; or 
 whether the near approach of the moment that 
 was henceforth, as he wildly imagined, to fix 
 Vetranio as his assistant and ally, so powerfully 
 affected his mind that it instinctively sought to 
 vent its agitation through the natural medium of 
 words, it is useless to inquire. Whatever his 
 motives for speech, the impressive earnestness of 
 his manner gave evidence of the depth and 
 intensity of his emotions, as he addressed the 
 senator thus : — 
 
 "I have submitted to servitude in a Christian's 
 house, I have suffered the contamination of a 
 Christian's prayers, to gain the use of your power 
 and station when the time to employ them should 
 arrive. The hour has now come when my part of 
 
264 ANTONINA. 
 
 the conditions of our engagement is to be per- 
 formed, the hour will yet come when your part 
 shall be exacted from you in turn ! Do you 
 wonder at what I have done and at what I will 
 do ? Do you marvel that a household drudge 
 should speak thus to a nobleman of Rome ? Are 
 you astonished that I risk so much as to venture 
 on enlisting you — by the sacrifice of the girl who 
 now slumbers above — in the cause, whose end is 
 the restoration of our father's gods, and in whose 
 service I have suffered and grown old \ Listen, 
 and you shall hear from what I am fallen — you 
 shall know what I once was ! 
 
 " My birth, my parents, my education, my 
 ancient abode — these I will not disclose. I have 
 sworn by my gods, that until the day of restitu- 
 tion these secrets" of my past life shall remain 
 unrevealed to stranger's ears. Unknown, I 
 entered Rome, and unknown I will labour in 
 Rome until the projects I have lived for are 
 crowned with success ! It is enough that I con- 
 fess to you that with those sacred images, whose 
 fragments you have just beheld, I was once lodged ; 
 
ANTONINA. 265 
 
 that those sacred vestments whose remains you 
 discerned at your feet, I once wore. To attain 
 the glories of the Priesthood there was nothing 
 that I did not resign, to preserve them there was 
 nothing I did not perform, to recover them there 
 is nothing that I will not attempt ! I was once 
 illustrious, prosperous, beloved ; of my glory, my 
 happiness, my popularity, the Christians have 
 robbed me ; and I will yet live to requite it heavily 
 at their hands ! I had a guardian who loved me 
 in my youth, the Christians murdered him I A 
 Temple was under the rule of my manhood, the 
 Christians destroyed it ! The people of a whole 
 nation once listened to my voice, the Christians 
 have dispersed them ! The wise, the great, the 
 beautiful, the good, were once devoted to me, 
 the Christians have made me a stranger at their 
 doors, an outcast of their affections and thoughts ! 
 For all this shall I take no vengeance ? Shall 
 I not plot to rebuild my ruined Temple, and win 
 back, in my age, the honours that adorned me in 
 my youth ? 
 
 " To mount over the bodies of the Christian 
 
266 ANTONINA. 
 
 slain to rebuild the altars that the Christians have 
 overthrown, is the ambition that has made light 
 to me the sufferings of my whole life. I have 
 battled, and it has sustained me in the midst of 
 carnage ; I have wandered, and it has been my 
 home in the desert ; I have failed, and it has sup- 
 ported me ; I have been threatened with death, 
 and it has preserved me from fear ; I have been 
 cast into slavery, and it has made my fetters light. 
 You see me now, old, degraded, lonely — believe that 
 I long neither for wife, children, tranquillity, nor 
 possessions; that I desire no companion but my 
 cherished and exalted purpose ! Remember then, 
 in the hour of performance, the promise you have 
 now made to aid me in the achievement of that 
 purpose ! Remember that you are a Pagan your- 
 self ! Feast, laugh, carouse with your compeers, 
 be still the airy jester, the gay companion ; but 
 never forget the end to which you are vowed — the 
 destiny of glory that the restoration of our deities 
 has in store for us both !" 
 
 He ceased. Though his voice while he spoke 
 never rose beyond a hoarse, monotonous, half- 
 
ANTONINA. 267 
 
 whispering tone, all the ferocity of his abused and 
 degraded nature was for the instant thoroughly 
 aroused by his recapitulation of his wrongs. Had 
 Vetranio at this moment shown any symptoms of 
 indecision, or spoken any words of discouragement, 
 he would have murdered him on the spot where 
 they stood. Every feature in the Pagan's seared 
 and livid countenance expressed the stormy emo- 
 tions that were rushing over his heart as he now- 
 confronted his bewildered, yet attentive listener. 
 His firm_, menacing position ; his poor and scanty 
 garments; his wild shaggy hair; his crooked, 
 distorted form ; his stern, solemn, unwavering 
 gaze ; opposed as they were (under the fitful 
 illumination of the expiring lamp and the advan- 
 cing daylight) to the unsteady gait, the vacant 
 countenance, the rich robes, the youthful grace of 
 form and delicacy of feature of the object of his 
 steady contemplation, made so wild and strange a 
 contrast between his patrician ally and himself, 
 that they scarcely looked like beings of the same 
 race. Nothing could be more immense than the 
 difference — more wild than the incongruity between 
 
268 ANTONINA. 
 
 them. It was sickness hand-in-hand with health ; 
 pain marshalled face to face with enjoyment ; 
 darkness ranged in monstrous discordance by the 
 very side of light. 
 
 The next instant, — just as the astonished senator 
 was preparing to frame a suitable answer to the 
 strange address of which he had been the object, — 
 Ulpius seized him by the arm ; and, opening a 
 door at the inner extremity of the apartment, led 
 him up some stairs that conducted to the interior 
 of the house. 
 
 They passed the hall, on the floor of which still 
 lay the fragments of the broken lute, dimly distin- 
 guishable in the soft light of day-break ; and, 
 ascending another staircase, paused at a little door 
 at the top, which Ulpius cautiously opened ; and 
 in a moment afterwards Vetranio was admitted 
 into Antonina's bedchamber. 
 
 The room was of no great extent ; its scanty 
 furniture was of the most ordinary description; 
 no ornaments glittered on its walls ; no frescos 
 adorned its ceilings ; and yet there was a simple 
 elegance in its appearance, an unobtrusive pro- 
 
ANTONINA. 269 
 
 priety in its minutest details, that made it at once 
 interesting and attractive to the eye. From the 
 white curtains at the window to the vase of flowers 
 that stood by the bedside, the same natural refine- 
 ment of taste appeared in the arrangement of all 
 that the apartment contained. No sound broke 
 the deep silence of the place save the low, soft 
 breathing, occasionally interrupted by a long, 
 trembling sigh, of its sleeping occupant. Its sole 
 light consisted of a little lamp so placed in the 
 middle of the flowers round the sides of the vase, 
 that its small radiance cast no extended or steady 
 illumination upon any part of the room. There 
 was something in the decent propriety of all that 
 was visible in the bedchamber ; in the soft ob- 
 scurity of its atmosphere ; in the gentle and 
 musical sound that alone interrupted its magical 
 stillness, impressive enough, it might have been 
 imagined, to have awakened some hesitation in 
 the bosom of the boldest libertine, ere he delibe- 
 rately proceeded to intrude on the unprotected 
 slumbers of its occupant. No such feeling of in- 
 decision, however, troubled the thoughts of 
 
270 ANTONINA. 
 
 Vetranio as he cast a rapid glance round the 
 apartment which he had ventured so treacherously 
 to invade. The fumes of the wine he had im- 
 bibed at the banquet had been so thoroughly 
 resuscitated by the oppressive atmosphere of the 
 subterranean retreat he had just quitted, as to 
 have left him nothing of his more refined nature. 
 All that was honourable or intellectual in his 
 character had now completely ceded to all that 
 was base and animal. He looked round, and per- 
 ceiving that Ulpius had silently quitted him, softly 
 closed the door. Then advancing to the bedside 
 with the utmost caution compatible with the in- 
 voluntary unsteadiness of an intoxicated man, he 
 took the lamp from the vase in which it was half 
 concealed, and earnestly surveyed by its light the 
 figure of the sleeping girl. 
 
 The head of Antonina was thrown back and 
 rested rather over than on her pillow. Her light 
 linen dress had become so disordered during the 
 night that it displayed her throat and part of her 
 bosom, in all the dawning beauties of their youth- 
 ful formation, to the gaze of the licentious Roman. 
 
ANTONINA. 271 
 
 One hand half supported her head, and was almost 
 entirely hidden in the locks of her long, black hair, 
 which had escaped from the white cincture in- 
 tended to confine it, and now streamed over the 
 pillow in dazzling contrast to the light bed furni- 
 ture around it. The other hand held tightly 
 clasped to her bosom the precious fragment of her 
 broken lute. The deep repose expressed in her 
 position had not thoroughly communicated itself 
 to her face. Now and then her slightly parted 
 lips moved and trembled, and ever and anon a 
 change, so faint and fugitive that it was hardly 
 perceptible, appeared in her complexion, breathing 
 on the soft olive that was its natural hue, the light 
 rosy flush which the emotions of the past night 
 had impressed on it ere she slept. Her position, 
 in its voluptuous negligence, seemed the very type 
 of Oriental loveliness, while her face, calm and 
 sorrowful in its expression, displayed the more 
 refined and sober graces of the European model. 
 And thus these two characteristics of two different 
 orders of beauty, appearing conjointly under one 
 form, produced a whole so various and yet so 
 
272 ANTONINA. 
 
 harmonious, so impressive and yet so attractive, 
 that the senator, as he bent over the couch, though 
 the warm, soft breath of the young girl played on 
 his cheeks, and waved the tips of his perfumed 
 locks, could hardly imagine that the scene before 
 him was more than a bright, delusive dream. 
 
 While Vetranio was yet absorbed in admiration 
 of her charms, Antonina's form slightly moved, as 
 if agitated by the influence of a passing dream. 
 The change thus accomplished in her position, 
 broke the spell that its former stillness and beauty 
 had unconsciously wrought to restrain the unhal- 
 lowed ardour of the profligate Roman. He now 
 passed his arm round her warm, slender figure ; 
 and gently raising her till her head rested on his 
 shoulder as he sat by the bed, imprinted kiss after 
 kiss on the pure lips that sleep had innocently 
 abandoned to him. 
 
 As he had forseen, Antonina instantly awoke ; 
 but to his unmeasured astonishment neither started 
 nor shrieked. The moment she had opened her 
 eyes she had recognised the person of Vetranio ; 
 and that overwhelming terror which suspends in 
 
ANTON IN A. 273 
 
 its victims the use of every faculty, whether of the 
 body or the mind, had immediately possessed itself 
 of her heart. Too innocent to imagine the real 
 motive that prompted the senator's intrusion on 
 her slumbers, where others of her sex would have 
 foreboded dishonour, she feared death. All her 
 father's vague denunciations against the enormities 
 of the nobles of Rome, rushed in an instant over 
 her mind, and her childish imagination pictured 
 Vetranio as armed with some terrible and myste- 
 rious vengeance to be wreaked on her for having 
 avoided all communication with him, as soon as 
 she had gained possession of her lute. Prostrate 
 beneath the petrifying influence of her fears, 
 motionless and powerless before him as its prey 
 before the serpent, she made no effort to move or 
 speak ; but looked up stedfastly into the senator s 
 face, her large eyes fixed and dilated in a gaze of 
 overpowering terror. 
 
 Intoxicated though he was, the affrighted 
 expression of the poor girPs pale, rigid countenance 
 did not escape Vetranio's notice ; and he taxed 
 his bewildered brain for such soothing and 
 
 n3 
 
274 ANTONINA. 
 
 reassuring expressions as would enable him to in- 
 troduce his profligate proposals with some chance 
 that they would be listened to and understood. 
 
 " Dearest pupil ! Most beautiful of Roman 
 maidens,"*^ he began in the husky, monotonous 
 tones of inebriety, '* abandon your fears ! I come 
 hither, wafted by the breath of love, to restore the 
 worship of the — I would say to bear you on my 
 bosom to a villa — the name of which has for the 
 moment escaped my remembrance. You cannot 
 have forgotten that it was I who taught you to 
 compose the Nightingale Sauce — or, no — let me 
 rather say to play upon the lute. Love, music, 
 pleasure, all await you in the arms of your attached 
 Vetranio. Your eloquent silence speaks en- 
 couragement to my heart. Beloved Anto " 
 
 Here the senator suddenly paused, for the eyes 
 of the girl which had hitherto been fixed on him 
 with the same expression of blank dismay that had 
 characterised them from the first, slowly moved in 
 the direction of the door. The instant afterwards, 
 a slight noise caught Vetranio^s ear, and Antonina 
 huddered so violently as he pressed her to his 
 
ANTONINA. ?,75 
 
 side, that he felt it through his whole frame. 
 Slowly and unwillingly he withdrew his gaze from 
 the pale, yet lovely countenance on which it had 
 been fixed, and looked up. 
 
 At the open door, pale, silent, motionless, stood 
 the master of the house. 
 
 Incapable from the confusion of his ideas of any 
 other feeling than the animal instinct of self- 
 defence, Vetranio no sooner beheld Numerian's 
 figure, than he rose, and drawing a small dagger 
 from his bosom attempted to advance on the 
 intruder. He found himself, however, restrained 
 by Antonina, who had fallen on her knees before 
 him, and grasped his robe with a strength which 
 seemed utterly incompatible with the slenderness 
 of her form and the feebleness of her sex and age. 
 
 The first voice that broke the silence which 
 ensued was Numerian's. He advanced, his face 
 ghastly with anguish, his lip quivering with sup- 
 pressed emotions, to the senator's side, and ad- 
 dressed him thus : — 
 
 " Put up your weapon, I come but to ask a 
 favour at your hands." 
 
276 ANTONINA. 
 
 Vetranio mechanically obeyed him. There was 
 something in the stern calmness^ frightful at 
 such a moment, of the Christian"*s manner that 
 awed him in spite of himself. 
 
 " The favour I would petition for/' continued 
 Numerian, in low, steady, bitter tones, *' is that 
 you would remove your harlot there, to your own 
 abode. Here, are no singing boys, no banquetting 
 halls, no perfumed couches. The retreat of a 
 solitary old man is no place for such an one as she. 
 I beseech you remove her to a more congenial 
 home. She is well fitted for her trade, her mother 
 was a harlot before her ! " 
 
 He laughed scornfully, and pointed as he spoke 
 to the figure of the unhappy girl kneeling with 
 outstretched arms at his feet. 
 
 " Father, father !" she cried, in accents bereft 
 of their native softness and melody, " have you 
 forgotten me V 
 
 '•'I know you not!" he replied, thrusting her 
 from him — " Return to his bosom, you shall 
 never more be pressed to mine ! Go to his 
 palace, my house is yours no longer ! You 
 
ANTONINA. 277 
 
 are his harlot, not my daughter ! I command 
 you — go !" 
 
 As he advanced towards her with fierce glance 
 and threatening demeanour, she suddenly rose up. 
 Her reason seemed crushed within her, as she 
 looked with frantic earnestness from Vetranio to 
 her father, and then back again from her father to 
 Vetranio. On one side she saw an enemy w^ho 
 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 
 lonely though it was, had still been a home to her; 
 and then without a word or a sigh she turned, 
 and crouching like a beaten dog, fled from the 
 house. 
 
 During the whole of the scene Vetranio had 
 stood so fixed in the helpless astonishment of 
 intoxication, as to be incapable of moving or utter- 
 ing a word. All that took place during the short 
 and terrible interview between father and child, 
 utterly perplexed him. He heard no loud, 
 violent anger on one side, no clamorous petitioning 
 
278 ANTONINA. 
 
 for forgiveness on the other. The stern old man 
 whom Antonina had called father, and who had 
 been pointed out to him as the most austere 
 Christian in Rome, far from avenging his intrusion 
 on Antonina's slumber, had voluntarily abandoned 
 his daughter to his licentious will. That the 
 anger or irony of so severe a man should inspire 
 such an action as this, or that Numerian, like his 
 servant, was plotting to obtain some strange 
 mysterious favour from him by using Antonina 
 as a bribe, seemed perfectly impossible. All that 
 passed before the senator was, to his bewildered 
 imagination, thoroughly incomprehensible. Fri- 
 volous, thoughtless, profligate as he might be, his 
 nature was not radically base, and when the scene 
 of which he had been the astounded witness was 
 abruptly terminated by 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 con- 
 fusion and dismay. 
 
ANTONINA. 279 
 
 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 Christianas voice. As he rose, suspect- 
 ing 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 ascer- 
 tain the progress of events, now that Numerian 
 must have discovered a portion at least of the 
 plot against his daughter and himself, by ascend- 
 ing immediately to Antonina's apartment, what- 
 ever might be the consequences of his intrusion 
 at such an hour on her father's wrath. 
 
280 ANTONINA. 
 
 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 towards 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 per- 
 ceptible in his livid countenance, but he uttered 
 not a word. 
 
 The senator's face became pale and red with 
 alternate emotions of apprehension and rage. He 
 
ANTONINA. 281 
 
 seized the Pagan by the throat, his eyes sparkled, 
 his blood boiled, he began to suspect even then 
 that Antonina was lost to him for ever. 
 
 '* I ask you again where is she ?" he shouted in 
 a voice of fury. '' If through this night's work she 
 is lost or harmed, I will revenge it on you. Is this 
 the performance of your promise ? Do you think 
 that I will direct your desired restoration of the 
 gods of old for this ? If evil comes to Antonina 
 through your treachery, sooner than assist you in 
 your secret projects, I would see you and your 
 accursed deities all burning together in the 
 Christians' hell ! Where is the girl, you slave ? 
 Villain, where was your vigilance when you let 
 that man surprise us at our first interview ? " 
 
 He turned towards Numerian as he spoke. 
 Trouble and emergency gift the faculties with a 
 more than mortal penetration. Every word that 
 he had uttered had eaten its burning way into the 
 father's heart. Hours of narrative could not have 
 convinced him how fatally he had been deceived, 
 more thoroughly than the few hasty expressions 
 he had just heard. No word passed his lips — no 
 
282 ANTONINA. 
 
 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. 
 
 Though all the ferocity of his old Roman blood 
 had been roused in Vetranio, as he threatened 
 Ulpius, the father's look of cold, silent, frightful 
 despair froze it in his young veins in an instant. 
 His heart was still the impressible heart of youth ; 
 and, struck for the first time in his life with emo- 
 tions of horror and remorse, he advanced a step to 
 offer such explanation and atonement as he best 
 might, when the voice of Ulpius suspended his 
 intentions, and made him pause to 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 ! " 
 
 '' Stand back ! " cried the senator, thrusting him 
 
ANTONINA. 283 
 
 from the position he had hitherto occupied in the 
 door- way. '^ She maybe 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. 
 
 The silence that now reigned in the apartment 
 was broken by distant sounds of uproar and con- 
 fusion in the streets of the city beneath. These 
 ominous noises had arisen with the dawn of day, 
 but the different emotions of the occupants of 
 Numerian'^s abode had so engrossed them, that 
 the turmoil in the outer world had passed un- 
 heeded by all. No sooner, however, had Vetranio 
 departed than it caught the attention of Ulpius, 
 and he advanced to the window. What he there 
 saw and heard was of no ordinary importance, for 
 it at once fixed him to the spot where he stood, in 
 mute and ungovernable surprise. 
 
 While Ulpius was occupied at the window, 
 Numerian had staggered to the side of the bed 
 which his ill-timed severity had made vacant, per- 
 haps for ever. The power of action, the capacity 
 
284 ANTONINA. 
 
 to go forth and seek his child himself, was entirely 
 suspended in the agony of her loss, as the miser- 
 able man fell on his knees, and in the anguish of 
 his heart endeavoured 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 un- 
 conscious of the lapse of time. 
 
 At length, apparently unaware at first that he 
 was not alone in the room, Numerian spoke. In 
 his low, broken, tremulous accents, none of his 
 adherents would have recognised the voice of the 
 eloquent preacher — the bold chastiser of the vices 
 of the Church. The whole nature of the man — 
 moral, intellectual, physical — seemed fatally and 
 completely changed. 
 
 " She was innocent, she was innocent I" he whis- 
 pered to himself. " And even had she been 
 guilty, was it for me to drive her from my doors ! 
 My part, like my Redeemers, was to teach 
 repentance and to show mercy ! Accursed be the 
 pride and anger that drove justice and patience 
 
ANTONINA. 2S5 
 
 from my heart, when I beheld her, as I thought, 
 submitting herself without a struggle or a cry, to 
 my dishonour, and hers ! Could I not have 
 imagined her terror, could I not have remembered 
 her purity ? Alas, my beloved, if I myself have 
 been the dupe of the wicked, what marvel is it 
 that you should have been betrayed as w^ell ! And 
 I have driven you from me, you, from whose 
 mouth no word of anger ever dropped ! I have 
 thrust you from my bosom, you, w^ho w^ere the 
 adornment of my age ! My death approaches, 
 and you will not be by to pardon my heavy offence, 
 to close my weary eyes, to mourn by my solitary 
 tomb ! God — oh God ! If 1 am left thus lonely 
 on the earth, thou hast punished me beyond what 
 I can bear ! " 
 
 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 
 
286 ANTONINA. 
 
 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 
 repaid me by plotting against my daughter and 
 deceiving me ! If your end was to harm me by 
 assailing my child's happiness and honour you have 
 succeeded ! If you would banish me from Rome, 
 if you would plunge me into obscurity, to serve 
 some mysterious ambition of your own, you may 
 dispose of me as you will ! I bow before the ter- 
 rible power of your treachery ! I will renounce 
 whatever you command, if you will restore me to 
 my child ! I am helpless and miserable ; I have 
 neither heart nor strength to seek her myself! 
 You, who know all things and can dare all dangers, 
 may restore her to pardon and bless me, if you 
 will ! Remember, whoever you really are, that 
 
ANTONINA. 287 
 
 you were once helpless and alone, and that you are 
 still old, like me I Remember that I have pro- 
 mised 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 ray labours for 
 the Church were more to me than anything on 
 earth, but now, that through my fault, my daugh- 
 ter is driven from her father's roof, I know that 
 she is dearer to me than the greatest of my 
 designs ; I must gain her pardon ; I must win 
 back her affection before I die ! You are power- 
 ful and can recover her ! Ulpius ! Ulpius ! " 
 
 As he spoke the Christian knelt at the Pagan 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 a 
 word he raised him from the ground, and thrusting 
 
288 ANTONINA. 
 
 hira to the window, pointed with flashing eyes to 
 the wide view without. 
 
 The sun had arisen high in the heaven and beamed 
 in dazzling brilHancy over Rome and the suburbs. 
 A vague, fearful, mysterious, desolation seemed to 
 have suddenly overwhelmed the whole range of 
 dwellings beyond the walls. No sounds rose from 
 the gardens, no population idled in the streets. 
 The ramparts on the other hand were crowded at 
 every visible point with people of all ranks, and 
 the distant squares and amphitheatres of the city 
 itself, swarmed like ant-hills to the eye with the 
 crowds that struggled within them. Confused 
 cries and strange wild noises rose at all points 
 from these masses of human beings. The whole 
 of Rome seemed the prey of a vast and universal 
 revolt. 
 
 Extraordinary and affrighting as was the scene 
 at the moment when he beheld it, it passed 
 unheeded before the eyes of the scarce conscious 
 father. He was blind to all sights but his 
 daughter's form, deaf to all sounds but her 
 voice ; and he murmured as he looked vacantly 
 
ANTONINA. 289 
 
 forth upon the wild view before him, '' Where is 
 my child — where is my child ! " 
 
 " What is your child to me ? What are the 
 fortunes or affections of man or woman, at such 
 an hour as this ? '' cried the Pagan, as he stood 
 by Numerian, with features horribly animated by 
 the emotions of fierce delight and triumph that 
 were raging within him at the prospect he beheld. 
 " Dotard, look from this window ! Listen to those 
 voices ! The gods whom I serve, the gods whom 
 you and your worship would fain have destroyed, 
 have risen to avenge themselves at last ! Behold 
 those suburbs — they are left desolate ! Hear 
 those cries — they are from Roman lips ! While 
 your household's puny troubles have run their 
 course, this city of apostates has been doomed ! 
 In the world's annals this morning will never be 
 forgotten ! The Goths are at the gates of 
 Rome ! " * 
 
 * Vide note, in Appendix — " The Goths at the gates of Rome." 
 
APPENDIX. 
 BOOK 11. CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE POPULATION OF ROME. 
 
 The principal source from which the author has derived such 
 information regarding the social condition of the people of the 
 Roman Empire, as he has endeavoured to convey to the reader 
 in a graphic manner in the text, will be found in the subjoined 
 extracts from the powerful and brilliant work of Sismondi, 
 " Histoire de la Chute de 1' Empire Remain," ed. Paris 1835. 
 The first quotation enumerates and describes, generally, 
 the different classes into which the people of the Empire 
 were divided : — 
 
 " Mais c'est surtout dans I'etat des personnes qu'il faut 
 chercher les causes de I'extreme foiblesse de I'empire re- 
 main. Nous pouvons distinguer dans I'empire six classes 
 d' habitans : nous trouvons d'abord des families senatoriales, 
 proprietaires d' immenses territoires et d' immenses richesses, 
 qui avoient successivement envahi dans les campagnes les 
 heritages de tous les petits proprietaires ; puis des habitans 
 des grandes villes, melange d'artisans et d'aifranchis, qui 
 vivoient du luxe des riches, qui participoient a leur corrup- 
 tion, et qui se faisoient redouter du gouvernement par des 
 seditions, jamais de 1' ennemi par du courage ; des habitans 
 de petites villes, appauvris, meprises et opprimes ; des colons 
 et des esclaves dans les campagnes ; des bagaudes enfin dans 
 les bois, qui pour se derober a I'oppression s'etoient voues 
 au brigandage. 
 
APPENDIX. 291 
 
 " La partie plus relevee de la nation pent communiquer au 
 gouvernement la sagesse et la vertu, si elle-meme est sage et 
 vertueuse ; mais elle ne lui donnera point la force, car la 
 force vient toujours d'en has ; elle precede toujours de la 
 gi'ande masse. Or, dans I'empire remain, cette masse si 
 variee dans sa langue, ses moeurs, sa religion, ses habi- 
 tudes, si sauvage au milieu de la civilisation, si opprimee et 
 si abrutie, etoit a peine aper^ue de ceux qui vivoient de ses 
 sueurs ; elle est a peine mentionnee par les historiens ; elle 
 languit dans la misere, elle de'perit, elle disparut presque 
 dans quelques provinces, sans qu'on ait daigne nous en 
 avertir ; et ce n'est que par une suite de comparaisons qu'on 
 parvient a connoitre sa destinee." — Tome i. pp. 30-31. 
 
 Speaking more particularly of the lower classes in the 
 towns and cities, the historian remarks : — 
 
 '' Ces grandes villes etoient elles-memes peuplees en tres 
 grande partie, d'artisans soumis a un regime assez severe, 
 d' affranchis et d' esclaves ; mais elles contenoient aussi un 
 nombre, beaucoup plus grand que de nos jours, d'hommes 
 qui, se contentant du plus absolu necessaire passoient leur 
 vie dans 1' oisivete. Toute cette population etoit egalement 
 desarmee, egalement etrangere a la patrie, egalement timide 
 devant I'ennemi et incapable de se defendre ; mais comme 
 elle etoit rassemblee, le pouvoir lui montroit quelque respect. 
 Dans toutes les villes du premier ordre, il y avoit des distri- 
 butions gratuites de vivies, tout comme il y avoit dans le 
 cirque et dans les theatres des courses de chars, des jeux, et 
 des spectacles gratuits. La legerete, I'amour du plaisir, 
 I'oubli de I'avenir qui ont toujours caracterise la populace 
 des grandes villes, suivirent lesRomains provinciaux au travers 
 des dernieres calamites de leur empire." — Tome i. p. 36. 
 
 Of the condition of the slaves the following picture is 
 presented : — 
 
 '' Les esclaves, de nouveau, formoient deux classes, ceux 
 qui etoient nes sur la propriete du maitre, et qui n'ayant par 
 consequent point d'autre domicile, point d'autre patrie, inspi- 
 roient unpen plus de confiance ; et ceux qu'on avoit achates. 
 
'7Qr> 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Les preraiei-s vivoient dans des corps de ferme ou dans des 
 cases baties tout autour, sous les yeux de leur commandeur, a 
 peu pres comme les negres des colonies ; toutefois, les mau- 
 vais traitemens, ravarice de leurs superieurs, la misere, le 
 desespoir, diminuoient sans cesse leur nombre ; aussi un 
 commerce tres actif s'occupoit dans tout I'empire romain de 
 recruter sans cesse leurs ateliers, par des captifs faits a la 
 guerre. Les victoires des armees romaines, souvent aussi 
 celles des barbares, en combat tant les uns contre les autres, 
 souvent encore les punitions infligees par les empereurs ou 
 leurs lieutenans, a des villes, a des provinces, qui s'etoient 
 revoltees, et dont tous les habitans etoient vendus sous la 
 lance du preteur, fournissoient cette seconde classe aux mar- 
 chands d'esclaves, aux depens de tout ce qu'il y avoit de plus 
 precieux dans la population. Ces miserables travailloient 
 presque constamment, avec des chaines aux pieds ; on les 
 exce'doit de fatigue, pour dompter ainsi leur vigueur et leur 
 ressentiment, puis on les enfermoit chaque nuit dans des 
 ergastules souterrains. 
 
 •' La souffi-ance effroyable d'une si grande partie de la 
 population, sa haine envenime'e contre ceux qui I'opprimoient, 
 avoient multiplie les revokes d'esclaves, les complots, les 
 assassinats et les empoisonnemens. En vain une loi san- 
 guinaire faisoit mettre a mort tous les esclaves d'un maitre 
 assassine, la vengeance et le desespoir n'en multiplioient pas 
 moins les crimes. Ceux qui s'etoient deja venges, ceux qui 
 n 'avoient pu le faire, mais sur qui planoient des soupcons, 
 s'enfuyoient dans les bois, et ne vivoient plus que de brigan- 
 dage. * * * * lis aggravoient, par leurs attaques, la 
 condition de ceux qui tout recemment encore etoient leurs 
 compagnons d'infortune : des districts, des provinces entieres, 
 etoient successivement abandonnes par les cultivateurs, et les 
 bois et les bruyeres succedoient aux anciennes moissons." — 
 Tome i., pp. 33, 34, 35. 
 
 The effect of the revolts of the slaves on the small land- 
 holders is thus subjoined : — 
 
 " Le riche senateur reparoit quelquefois ses pertes, ou 
 
APPENDIX. 293 
 
 obtenoit les secours de I'autorite pour defendre son bien ; mais 
 le petit proprietaire qui cultivoit lui-meme son champ ne 
 pouvoit echapper a tant de desordres et de violences ; sa vie 
 comme toute sa fortune etoient chaque jour en danger. II se 
 hatoit done de se defaire de son patrimoine a tout prix, toutes 
 les fois qu'un de ses opulens voisins vouloit racheter ; souvent 
 aussi il I'abandonnoit sans compensation ; souvent il etoit 
 exproprie par les pretentions du fisc et le poids accablant des 
 charges publiques : aussi toute cette classe de cultivateurs 
 libres qui, plus qu'une autre connoit I'amour de la patrie, qui 
 pent defendre le sol, et qui doit foumir les meilleurs soldats, 
 disparut bientot entierement. Le nombre des proprietaires 
 diminua a tel point qu'un homme opulent, un homme de 
 famille senatoriale, avoit le plus souvent dix lieues a faire 
 avant de rencontrer un egal ou un voisin : aussi quelques uns 
 d'entre eux, proprietaires de provinces entieres, etoient deja 
 consideres comme de petits souverains." — Tome i., p. 35. 
 
 Some idea of the politic lenity displayed by the Church in 
 estimating the crimes of the Emperor Constantine may be 
 formed from the following passage. The reader of history 
 will find no reason to suppose, as he advances to later dates, 
 that the ecclesiastics of the age of Honorius were less 
 unscupulously attached to their temporal interests than their 
 predecessors of the age of Constantine. 
 
 " Dans le palais qu'il avoit rendu desert, apres avoir fait 
 perir son beau-pere, ses beaux-freres, sa soeur, sa femme, son 
 fils, son neveu, Constantin auroit senti le remords, si de faux 
 pretres, des eveques courtisans, n'avoient endormi sa con- 
 science. Nous avons encore les panegyriques dans lesquelles 
 ils le representent comme un favori du ciel, comme un saint 
 digne de toute notre veneration. Nous avons aussi plusieurs 
 des lois par la publication desquelles Constantin rachetoit 
 ses crimes aux yeux des pretres, en comblant I'eglise de 
 faveurs inouies." — Tome i. p. 116. 
 
294 APPENDIX. 
 
 BOOK II. CHx\PTER V. 
 
 THE GOTHS AT THE GATES OF ROME. 
 
 To those readers who may be desirous of consulting an 
 uninterrupted narrative of the events immediately preceding 
 the siege of Rome by the Goths, as simply related by an 
 ancient historian, the extract from Zosimus which follows 
 may perhaps prove acceptable. The quotation is taken from 
 an old English translation of the Greek writer, published at 
 London, in 1684, and entitled " The New History of Count 
 Zosimus, sometime Advocate of the Treasury of the Roman 
 Empire. Newly Englished." 
 
 After mentioning the unfavourable reception by the 
 Emperor Honorius, of Alaric's final proposals for a peace, 
 the history proceeds : — 
 
 " The Emperor refused him his request, although he must 
 have of necessity done one thing or other of two that were 
 before him, if he would have disposed of his affairs the right 
 way. For he must either have deferred the war and pro- 
 cured a peace for some small sum, or if he would rather 
 fight, he ought to have mustered up all tlie legions that he 
 could, and posted them in the enemy's way, to obstruct the 
 barbarians from coming any further on. Besides which, he 
 should have chosen a fit man to lead them, and made Sarus 
 general of the war, who in his own person was sufficient to 
 strike a terror into the enemy, upon account both of his 
 courage and his experience in warlike affairs, and had also a 
 number of barbarians under him, enough to make a good 
 defence. But he, on the contrary, neither embracing the 
 offer of peace, nor making Sarus his friend, nor mustering up 
 the Roman army, but placing all his hopes in the desires 
 and wishes of Olympius, was the cause of so many calamities 
 to the commonwealth. For he made such men commanders 
 as were contemptible in the esteem of the enemy, — to wit, 
 
APPENDIX. 295 
 
 Turpilio, whom he made general of the horse, Varanes of the 
 foot, Vigilantius of the domestics ; and so of all other things 
 accordingly. Upon which account all men despaired, and 
 seemed to have the utter ruin of Italy before their eyes. 
 
 " Now seeing these things were thus ordered, Alarichus 
 began his expedition against Rome, and laughed at the pre- 
 parations made by Honorius. And because he would not go 
 about such a weighty business with only equal, but rather 
 far greater forces than his enemy, he sent for his wife's 
 brother, called Ataulphus, out of the upper Pannonia, to be 
 his partner in the action, as having a veiy considerable 
 number of Goths and Huns to bring along with him. Yet, 
 nevertheless, he did not stay for his brother-in-law's coming, 
 but marching forward in haste, passed by Acquileia and all 
 the other cities in order that lie beyond the river Po ; I 
 mean Concordia, Altiuum, and Cremona. And when he had 
 crossed the river, being as it were at some festival, and 
 having no enemy to stop him, he came into a certain castle of 
 Bononia, which they call fficubaria, and from whence passing 
 by all iEmilia, and leaving Ravenna behind him, he came to 
 Ariminium, a great city of Flaminia. But moving by that 
 also with speed, as he did by all the rest that were in that 
 province, he came into Picenum, which is a nation lying in 
 the extremity of the Ionian Bay. And from thence march- 
 ing towards Rome, he sacked all the cities and towns that 
 were in his way." — Book v. 
 
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