Ch. 17 - The Huns

More than an hour after Hermanric had left the encampment, a man
hurriedly entered the house set apart for the young chieftain's
occupation. He made no attempt to kindle either light or fire, but sat
down in the principal apartment, occasionally whispering to himself in a
strange and barbarous tongue.

He had remained but a short time in possession of his comfortless
solitude, when he was intruded on by a camp-follower, bearing a small
lamp, and followed closely by a woman, who, as he started up and
confronted her, announced herself as Hermanric's kinswoman, and eagerly
demanded an interview with the Goth.

Haggard and ghastly though it was from recent suffering and long
agitation, the countenance of Goisvintha (for it was she) appeared
absolutely attractive as it was now opposed by the lamp-light to the
face and figure of the individual she addressed. A flat nose, a swarthy
complexion, long, coarse, tangled locks of deep black hair, a beardless,
retreating chin, and small, savage, sunken eyes, gave a character almost
bestial to this man's physiognomy. His broad, brawny shoulders overhung
a form that was as low in stature as it was athletic in build; you
looked on him and saw the sinews of a giant strung in the body of a
dwarf. And yet this deformed Hercules was no solitary error of Nature--
no extraordinary exception to his fellow-beings, but the actual type of
a whole race, stunted and repulsive as himself. He was a Hun.

This savage people, the terror even of their barbarous neighbours,
living without government, laws, or religion, possessed but one feeling
in common with the human race--the instinct of war. Their historical
career may be said to have begun with their early conquests in China,
and to have proceeded in their first victories over the Goths, who
regarded them as demons, and fled at their approach. The hostilities
thus commenced between the two nations were at length suspended by the
temporary alliance of the conquered people with the empire, and
subsequently ceased in the gradual fusion of the interests of each in
one animating spirit--detestation of Rome.

By this bond of brotherhood, the Goths and the Huns became publicly
united, though still privately at enmity--for the one nation remembered
its former defeats as vividly as the other remembered its former
victories. With various disasters, dissensions, and successes, they ran
their career of battle and rapine, sometimes separate, sometimes
together, until the period of our romance, when Alaric's besieging
forces numbered among the ranks of their barbarian auxiliaries a body of
Huns, who, unwillingly admitted to the title of Gothic allies, were
dispersed about the army in subordinate stations, and of whom the
individual