Ch. 15 - The City and the Gods

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

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

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

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

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

But as the night still deepened, this one space of