Ch. 16 - Love Meetings - Page 2

charm, after the austere loneliness to which her former
existence had been subjected in Rome. And when evening came, and the
sun began to burnish the tops of the western tress, then, after the calm
emotions of the solitary day, came the hour of absorbing cares and happy
expectations--ever the same, yet ever delighting and ever new. Then the
rude shutters were carefully closed; the open door was shut and barred;
the small light--now invisible to the world without--was joyfully
kindled; and then, the mistress and author of these preparations
resigned herself to await, with pleased anxiety, the approach of the
guest for whose welcome they were designed.

And never did she expect the arrival of that treasured companion in
vain. Hermanric remembered his promise to repair constantly to the
farm-house, and performed it with all the constancy of love and all the
enthusiasm of youth. When the sentinels under his command were arranged
in their order of watching for the night, and the trust reposed in him
by his superiors exempted his actions from superintendence during the
hours of darkness that followed, he left the camp, passed through the
desolate suburbs, and gained the dwelling where the young Roman awaited
him--returning before daybreak to receive the communication s regularly
addressed to him, at that hour, by his inferior in the command.

Thus, false to his nation, yet true to the new Egeria of his thoughts
and actions--traitor to the requirements of vengeance and war, yet
faithful to the interests of tranquility and love--did he seek, night
after night, Antonina's presence. His passion, though it denied him to
his warrior duties, wrought not deteriorating change in his disposition.
All that it altered in him it altered nobly. It varied and exalted his
rude emotions, for it was inspired, not alone by the beauty and youth
that he saw, but by the pure thoughts, the artless eloquence that he
heard. And she--the forsaken daughter, the source whence the Northern
warrior derived those new and higher sensations that had never animated
him until now--regarded her protector, her first friend and companion,
as her first love, with a devotion which, in its mingled and exalted
nature, may be imagined by the mind, but can be but imperfectly depicted
by the pen. It was a devotion created of innocence and gratitude, of
joy and sorrow, of apprehension and hope. It was too fresh, too
unworldly to own any upbraidings of artificial shame, any self-
reproaches of artificial propriety. It resembled in its essence, though
not in its application, the devotion of the first daughters of the Fall
to their brother-lords.

But it is now time that we return to the course of our narrative;
although, ere we again enter on the stirring