*CHAPTER V*
*RETURN*
The Eve of the Millennium stood upon the threshold of Time.
The veiled sun of midwinter was rising and his early rays filled theblue balconies of the East with curtains of gold. From the slopes ofPaterno a strange procession was to be seen winding its way down intothe plains below. It was the remnant of the German host, carrying thebier with the body of the third Otto towards its distant, finalresting-place. Eckhardt and Haco jointly headed the mournful cortege,which after reaching the plain, entered the northern road. Behind themlay Civita Castellana, the walls of the ancient citadel towering highabove the town, which lay in the centre of a net-work of deep ravines.To their right the Sabine hills extended in long, airy lines and thewooded heights of Pellachio and San Gennaro rose to the south-east.Before them Viterbo with her hundred towers lay dark and frowning insideher bristling walls; and to northward, surmounted by its mightycathedral dome, on a conical hill, above the great lake of Bolsena, thegray town of Montefiascone rose out of the wintry haze.
Continually harassed by the Romans the small band hewed their waythrough their pursuers who abandoned their onslaughts only when theGermans reached the Nera and beheld the Campanile of St. Juvenale risingabove Narni.
Slowly the imperial cortege passed through the ancient town and was soonlost in the purple mists, which enshrouded mountain and valley.
Rome lay behind them, the source of their tears and sorrows.
Onward, ever onward they rode towards the glittering crests of the Alps,the solemn twilight of the Hercynian forest, towards the distant banksof the Rhine and the crypts of Aix-la-Chapelle.
THE END.
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