CHAPTER 23.
THE LAST EFFORTS OF THE BESIEGED.
We return to the street before the palace. The calamities of the siegehad fallen fiercely on those who lay there during the night. From theturbulent and ferocious mob of a few hours since, not even the sound ofa voice was now heard. Some, surprised in a paroxysm of hunger byexhaustion and insensibility, lay with their hands half forced intotheir mouths, as if in their ravenous madness they had endeavoured toprey upon their own flesh. Others now and then wearily opened theirlanguid eyes upon the street, no longer regardful, in the presentextremity of their sufferings, of the building whose destruction theyhad assembled to behold, but watching for a fancied realisation of thevisions of richly spread tables and speedy relief called up beforethem, as if in mockery, by the delirium of starvation and disease.
The sun had as yet but slightly risen above the horizon, when theattention of the few among the populace who still preserved someperception of outward events was suddenly attracted by the appearanceof an irregular procession--composed partly of citizens and partly ofofficers of the Senate, and headed by two men--which slowly approachedfrom the end of the street leading into the interior of the city. Thisassembly of persons stopped opposite Vetranio's palace; and then suchmembers of the mob who watched them as were not yet entirely abandonedby hope, heard the inspiring news that the procession they beheld was aprocession of peace, and that the two men who headed it were theSpaniard, Basilius, a governor of a province, and Johannes, the chiefof the Imperial notaries--appointed ambassadors to conclude a treatywith the Goths.
As this intelligence reached them, men who had before appearedincapable of the slightest movement now rose painfully, yet resolutely,to their feet, and crowded round the two ambassadors as round twoangels descended to deliver them from bondage and death. Meanwhile,some officers of the Senate, finding the front gates of the palaceclosed against them, proceeded to the garden entrance at the back ofthe building, to obtain admission to its owner. The absence ofVetranio and his friends from the deliberations of the government hadbeen attributed to their disgust at the obstinate and unavailingresistance offered to the Goths. Now, therefore, when submission hadbeen resolved upon, it had been thought both expedient and easy torecall them peremptorily to their duties. In addition to this motivefor seeking the interior of the palace, the servants of the Senate hadanother errand to perform there. The widely rumoured determination ofVetranio and his associates to destroy themselves by fire, in thefrenzy of a last debauch--disbelieved or disregarded while the moreimminent perils of the city were under consideration--became a sourceof some apprehension and anxiety to the acting members of the Romancouncil, now that their minds were freed from part of theresponsibility which had weighed on them, by their resolution to treatfor peace.
Accordingly, the persons now sent into the palace were charged with theduty of frustrating its destruction, if such an act had been reallycontemplated, as well as the duty of recalling its inmates to theirappointed places in the Senate-house. How far they were enabled, atthe time of their entrance into the banqueting-hall, to accomplishtheir double mission, the reader is well able to calculate. They foundVetranio still in the place which he had occupied since Antonina hadquitted him. Startled by their approach from the stupor which hadhitherto weighed on his faculties, the desperation of his purposereturned; he made an effort to tear from its place the lamp which stillfeebly burned, and to fire the pile in defiance of all opposition. Buthis strength, already taxed to the utmost, failed him. Utteringimpotent threats of resistance and revenge, he fell, swooning andhelpless, into the arms of the officers of the Senate who held himback. One of them was immediately dismissed, while his companionsremained in the palace, to communicate with the leaders of the assemblyoutside. His report concluded, the two ambassadors moved slowly onward,separating themselves from the procession which had accompanied them,and followed only by a few chosen attendants--a mournful and a degradedembassy, sent forth by the people who had once imposed their dominion,their customs, and even their language, on the Eastern and Westernworlds, to bargain with the barbarians whom their fathers had enslavedfor the purchase of a disgraceful peace.
On the departure of the ambassadors, all the spectators still capableof the effort repaired to the Forum to await their return, and werejoined there by members of the populace from other parts of the city.It was known that the first intimation of the result of the embassywould be given from this place; and in the eagerness of their anxietyto hear it, in the painful intensity of their final hopes ofdeliverance, even death itself seemed for a while to be arrested in itsfatal progress through the ranks of the besieged.
In silence and apprehension they counted the tardy moments of delay,and watched with sickening gaze the shadows lessening and lessening, asthe sun gradually rose in the heavens to the meridian point.
At length, after an absence that appeared of endless duration, the twoambassadors re-entered Rome. Neither of them spoke as they hurriedlypassed through the ranks of the people; but their looks of terror anddespair were all-eloquent to every beholder--their mission had failed.
For some time no member of the government appeared to have resolutionenough to come forward and harangue the people on the subject of theunsuccessful embassy. After a long interval, however, the PrefectPompeianus himself, urged partly by the selfish entreaties of hisfriends, and partly by the childish love of display which still adheredto him through all his present anxieties and apprehensions, steppedinto one of the lower balconies of the Senate-house to address thecitizens beneath him.
The chief magistrate of Rome was no longer the pompous and portlypersonage whose intrusion on Vetranio's privacy during the commencementof the siege has been described previously. The little superfluousflesh still remaining on his face hung about it like an ill-fittinggarment; his tones had become lachrymose; the oratorical gestures, withwhich he was wont to embellish profusely his former speeches, were allabandoned; nothing remained of the original man but the bombast of hislanguage and the impudent complacency of his self-applause, which nowappeared in contemptible contrast to his crestfallen demeanour and hisdisheartening narrative of degradation and defeat.
'Men of Rome, let each of you exercise in his own person the heroicvirtues of a Regulus or a Cato!' the prefect began. 'A treaty with thebarbarians is out of our power. It is the scourge of the empire,Alaric himself, who commands the invading forces! Vain were thedignified remonstrances of the grave Basilius, futile was thepersuasive rhetoric of the astute Johannes, addressed to theslaughtering and vainglorious Goth! On their admission to hispresence, the ambassadors, anxious to awe him into a capitulation,enlarged, with sagacious and commendable patriotism, on the expertnessof the Romans in the use of arms, their readiness for war, and theirvast numbers within the city walls. I blush to repeat the barbarian'sreply. Laughing immoderately, he answered, "The thicker the grass, theeasier it is to cut!"
'Still undismayed, the ambassadors, changing their tactics, talkedindulgently of their willingness to purchase a peace. At thisproposal, his insolence burst beyond all bounds of barbarous arrogance."I will not relinquish the siege," he cried, "until I have delivered tome all the gold and silver in the city, all the household goods in it,and all the slaves from the northern countries." "What then, O King,will you leave us?" asked our amazed ambassadors. "YOUR LIVES!"answered the implacable Goth. Hearing this, even the resolute Basiliusand the wise Johannes despaired. They asked time to communicate withthe Senate, and left the camp of the enemy without further delay. Suchwas the end of the embassy; such the arrogant ferocity of the barbarianfoe!'
Here the Prefect paused, from sheer weakness and want of breath. Hisoration, however, was not concluded. He had disheartened the people byhis narrative of what had occurred to the ambassadors; he now proceededto console them by his relation of what had occurred to himself, when,after an interval, he thus resumed:--
'But even yet, O citizens of Rome, it is not time to despair! The
re isanother chance of deliverance still left to us, and that chance hasbeen discovered by me. It was my lot, during the absence of theambassadors, to meet with certain men of Tuscany, who had entered Romea few days before the beginning of the siege, and who spoke of aproject for relieving the city which they would communicate to thePrefect alone. Ever anxious for the public welfare, daring alltreachery from strangers for advantage of my office, I accorded tothese men a secret interview. They told me of a startling andmiraculous event. The town of Neveia, lying, as you well know, in thedirect road of the barbarians when they marched upon Rome, wasprotected from their pillaging bands by a tempest of thunder andlightning terrible to behold. This tempest arose not, as you maysuppose, from an accidental convulsion of the elements, but waslaunched over the heads of the invaders by the express interference ofthe tutelary deities of the town, invocated by the inhabitants, whoreturned in their danger to the practice of their ancient manner ofworship. So said the men of Tuscany; and such pious resources as thoseemployed by the people of Neveia did they recommend to the people ofRome! For my part, I acknowledge to you that I have faith in theirproject. The antiquity of our former worship is still venerable in myeyes. The prayers of the priests of our new religion have wrought nomiraculous interference in our behalf: let us therefore imitate theexample of the inhabitants of Neveia, and by the force of ourinvocations hurl the thunders of Jupiter on the barbarian camp! Let ustrust for deliverance to the potent interposition of the gods whom ourfathers worshipped--those gods who now, perhaps, avenge themselves forour desertion of their temples by our present calamities. I go withoutdelay to propose to the Bishop Innocentius and to the Senate, thepublic performance of solemn ceremonies of sacrifice at the Capitol! Ileave you in the joyful assurance that the gods, appeased by ourreturning fidelity to our altars, will not refuse the supernaturalprotection which they accorded to the people of a provincial town tothe citizens of Rome!'
No sounds either of applause or disapprobation followed the Prefect'snotable proposal for delivering the city from the besiegers by thepublic apostasy of the besieged. As he disappeared from their eyes,the audience turned away speechless. An universal despair nowoverpowered in them even the last energies of discord and crime; theyresigned themselves to their doom with the gloomy indifference ofbeings in whom all mortal sensations, all human passions, good or evil,were extinguished. The Prefect departed on his ill-omened expeditionto propose the practice of Paganism to the bishop of a Christianchurch; but no profitable effort for relief was even suggested, eitherby the government or the people.
And so this day drew in its turn towards a close--more mournful andmore disastrous, more fraught with peril, misery, and gloom, than thedays that had preceded it.
The next morning dawned, but no preparations for the ceremonies of theancient worship appeared at the Capitol. The Senate and the bishophesitated to incur the responsibility of authorising a publicrestoration of Paganism; the citizens, hopeless of succour, heavenly orearthly, remained unheedful as the dead of all that passed around them.
There was one man in Rome who might have succeeded in rousing theirlanguid energies to apostasy; but where and how employed was he?
Now, when the opportunity for which he had laboured resolutely, thoughin vain, through a long existence of suffering, degradation, and crime,had gratuitously presented itself more tempting and more favourablethan even he in his wildest visions of success had ever dared tohope--where was Ulpius? Hidden from men's eyes, like a foul reptile,in his lurking-place in the deserted temple--now raving round his idolsin the fury of madness, now prostrate before them in idiotadoration--weaker for the interests of his worship, at the crisis ofits fate, than the weakest child crawling famished through thestreets--the victim of his own evil machinations at the very momentwhen they might have led him to triumph--the object of that worstearthly retribution, by which the wicked are at once thwarted, doomed,and punished, here as hereafter, through the agency of their own sins.
Three more days passed. The Senate, their numbers fast diminishing inthe pestilence, occupied the time in vain deliberations or in moodysilence. Each morning the weary guards looked forth from the ramparts,with the fruitless hope of discerning the long-promised legions fromRavenna on their way to Rome; and each morning devastation and deathgained ground afresh among the hapless besieged.
At length, on the fourth day, the Senate abandoned all hope of furtherresistance and determined on submission, whatever might be the result.It was resolved that another embassy, composed of the whole actingSenate, and followed by a considerable train, should proceed to Alaric;that one more effort should be made to induce him to abate his ruinousdemands on the conquered; and that if this failed, the gates should bethrown open, and the city and the people abandoned to his mercy indespair.
As soon as the procession of this last Roman embassy was formed in theForum, its numbers were almost immediately swelled, in spite ofopposition, by those among the mass of the people who were still ableto move their languid and diseased bodies, and who, in the extremity oftheir misery, had determined at all hazards to take advantage of theopening of the gates, and fly from the city of pestilence in which theywere immured, careless whether they perished on the swords of the Gothsor languished unaided on the open plains. All power of enforcing orderhad long since been lost; the few soldiers gathered about the senatorsmade one abortive effort to drive the people back, and then resignedany further resistance to their will.
Feebly and silently the spirit-broken assembly now moved along thegreat highways, so often trodden, to the roar of martial music and theshouts of applauding multitudes, by the triumphal processions ofvictorious Rome; and from every street, as it passed on, the wastedforms of the people stole out like spectres to join it.
Among these, as the embassy approached the Pincian Gate, were two,hurrying forth to herd with their fellow-sufferers, on whose fortunesin the fallen city our more particular attention has been fixed. Toexplain their presence on the scene (if such an explanation berequired) it is necessary to digress for a moment from the progress ofevents during the last days of the siege to the morning when Antoninadeparted from Vetranio's palace to return with her succour of food andwine to her father's house.
The reader is already acquainted, from her own short and simplenarrative, with the history of the closing hours of her mournful nightvigil by the side of her sinking parent, and with the motives whichprompted her to seek the palace of the senator, and entreat assistancein despair from one whom she only remembered as the profligatedestroyer of her tranquility under her father's roof. It is now,therefore, most fitting to follow her on her way back through thepalace gardens. No living creature but herself trod the grassy paths,along which she hastened with faltering steps--those paths which shedimly remembered to have first explored when in former days sheventured forth to follow the distant sounds of Vetranio's lute.
In spite of her vague, heavy sensations of solitude and grief, thisrecollection remained painfully present to her mind, unaccountablymingled with the dark and dreary apprehension which filled her heart asshe hurried onward, until she once more entered her father's dwelling;and then, as she again approached his couch, every other feeling becameabsorbed in a faint, overpowering fear, lest, after all herperseverance and success in her errand of filial devotion, she mighthave returned too late.
The old man still lived--his weary eyes opened gladly on her, when shearoused him to partake of the treasured gifts from the senator'sbanqueting table. The wretched food which the suicide-guests haddisdained, and the simple flask of wine which they would havecarelessly quaffed at one draught, were viewed both by parent and childas the saving and invigorating sustenance of many days. After havingconsumed as much as they dared of their precarious supply, theremainder was carefully husbanded. It was the last sign and promise oflife to which they looked--the humble yet precious store in which alonethey beheld the earnest of their security, for a few days longer, fromthe pangs of famine and the separati
on of death.
And now, with their small provision of food and wine set like a beaconof safety before their sight, a deep, dream-like serenity--the sleep ofthe oppressed and wearied faculties--arose over their minds. Under itsmysterious and tranquilising influence, all impressions of the gloomand misery in the city, of the fatal evidences around them of theduration of the siege, faded away before their perceptions as dimretiring objects, which the eye loses in vacancy.
Gradually, as the day of the first unsuccessful embassy declined, theirthoughts began to flow back gently to the world of bygone events whichhad crumbled into oblivion beneath the march of time. Her firstrecollections of her earliest childhood revived in Antonina's memory,and then mingled strangely with tearful remembrances of the last wordsand looks of the young warrior who had expired by her side, and withcalm, solemn thoughts that the beloved spirit, emancipated from thesphere of shadows, might now be hovering near the quiet garden-gravewhere her bitterest tears of loneliness and affliction had been shed,or moving around her--an invisible and blessed presence--as she sat ather father's feet and mourned their earthly separation!
In the emotions thus awakened, there was nothing of bitterness oragony--they calmed and purified the heart through which they moved.She could now speak to the old man, for the first time, of her days ofabsence from him, of the brief joys and long sorrows of her hours ofexile, without failing in her melancholy tale. Sometimes her fatherlistened to her in sorrowful and speechless attention; or spoke, whenshe paused, of consolation and hope, as she had heard him speak amonghis congregation while he was yet strong in his resolution to sacrificeall things for the reformation of the Church. Sometimes resigninghimself to the influence of his thoughts, as they glided back to thetimes that were gone, he again revealed to her the changing events ofhis past life--not as before, with unsteady accents and wandering eyes;but now with a calmness of voice and a coherence of language whichforbade her to doubt the strange and startling narrative that she heard.
Once more he spoke of the image of his lost brother (as he had partedfrom him in his boyhood) still present to his mind; of the country thathe had quitted in after years; of the name that he had changed--fromCleander to Numerian--to foil his former associates, if they stillpursued him; and of the ardent desire to behold again the companion ofhis first home, which now, when his daughter was restored to him, whenno other earthly aspiration but this was unsatisfied, remained at theclose of his life, the last longing wish of his heart.
Such was the communion in which father and daughter passed the hours oftheir short reprieve from the judgment of famine pronounced against thecity of their sojourn; so did they live, as it were, in a quietinterval of existence, in a tranquil pause between the toil that isover and the toil that is to come in the hard labour of life.
But the term to these short days of repose after long suffering andgrief was fast approaching. The little hoard of provision diminishedas rapidly as the stores that had been anxiously collected before it;and, on the morning of the second embassy to Alaric, the flask of wineand the bowl of food were both emptied. The brief dream of securitywas over and gone; the terrible realities of the struggle for life hadbegun again!
Where or to whom could they now turn for help? The siege stillcontinued; the food just exhausted was the last food that had been lefton the senator's table; to seek the palace again would be to riskrefusal, perhaps insult, as the result of a second entreaty for aid,where all power of conferring it might now but too surely be lost.Such were the thoughts of Antonina as she returned the empty bowl toits former place; but she gave them no expression in words.
She saw, with horror, that the same expression of despair, almost offrenzy, which had distorted her father's features on the day of herrestoration to him, now marked them again. Once more he totteredtowards the window, murmuring in his bitter despondency against thedelusive security and hope which had held him idle for the interests ofhis child during the few days that were past. But, as he now lookedout on the beleaguered city, he saw the populace hastening along thegloomy street beneath, as rapidly as their wearied limbs would carrythem, to join the embassy. He heard them encouraging each other toproceed, to seize the last chance of escaping through the open gatesfrom the horrors of famine and plague; and caught the infection of therecklessness and despair which had seized his fellow-sufferers from oneend of Rome to the other.
Turning instantly, he grasped his daughter's hand and drew her from theroom, commanding her to come forth with him and join the citizens intheir flight, ere it was too late. Startled by his words and actions,she vainly endeavoured, as she obeyed, to impress her father with thedread of the Goths which her own bitter experience taught her to feel,now that her only protector among them lay cold in the grave. WithNumerian, as with the rest of the people, all apprehension, all doubt,all exercise of reason, was overpowered by the one eager idea ofescaping from the fatal precincts of Rome.
So they mingled with the throng, herding affrightedly together in therear of the embassy, and followed in their ranks as best they might.
The sun shone down brightly from the pure blue sky; the wind bore intothe city the sharp threatening notes of the trumpets from the Gothiccamp, as the Pincian Gate was opened to the ambassadors and theirtrain. With one accord the crowd instantly endeavoured to force theirway out after them in a mass; but they now moved in a narrow space, andwere opposed by a large reinforcement of the city guard. After a shortstruggle they were overpowered, and the gates were closed. Some few ofthe strongest and the foremost of their numbers succeeded in followingthe ambassadors; the greater part, however, remained on the inner sideof the gate, pressing closely up to it in their impatience and despair,like prisoners awaiting their deliverance, or preparing to force theirescape.
Among these, feeblest amid the most feeble, were Numerian and Antonina,hemmed in by the surrounding crowd, and shut out either from flightfrom the city or a return to home.