Ch. 23 - The Last Efforts of the Besieged

We return to the street before the palace. The calamities of the siege
had fallen fiercely on those who lay there during the night. From the
turbulent and ferocious mob of a few hours since, not even the sound of
a voice was now heard. Some, surprised in a paroxysm of hunger by
exhaustion and insensibility, lay with their hands half forced into
their mouths, as if in their ravenous madness they had endeavoured to
prey upon their own flesh. Others now and then wearily opened their
languid eyes upon the street, no longer regardful, in the present
extremity of their sufferings, of the building whose destruction they
had assembled to behold, but watching for a fancied realisation of the
visions of richly spread tables and speedy relief called up before them,
as if in mockery, by the delirium of starvation and disease.

The sun had as yet but slightly risen above the horizon, when the
attention of the few among the populace who still preserved some
perception of outward events was suddenly attracted by the appearance of
an irregular procession--composed partly of citizens and partly of
officers of the Senate, and headed by two men--which slowly approached
from the end of the street leading into the interior of the city. This
assembly of persons stopped opposite Vetranio's palace; and then such
members of the mob who watched them as were not yet entirely abandoned
by hope, heard the inspiring news that the procession they beheld was a
procession of peace, and that the two men who headed it were the
Spaniard, Basilius, a governor of a province, and Johannes, the chief of
the Imperial notaries--appointed ambassadors to conclude a treaty with
the Goths.

As this intelligence reached them, men who had before appeared incapable
of the slightest movement now rose painfully, yet resolutely, to their
feet, and crowded round the two ambassadors as round two angels
descended to deliver them from bondage and death. Meanwhile, some
officers of the Senate, finding the front gates of the palace closed
against them, proceeded to the garden entrance at the back of the
building, to obtain admission to its owner. The absence of Vetranio and
his friends from the deliberations of the government had been attributed
to their disgust at the obstinate and unavailing resistance offered to
the Goths. Now, therefore, when submission had been resolved upon, it
had been thought both expedient and easy to recall them peremptorily to
their duties. In addition to this motive for seeking the interior of
the palace, the servants of the Senate had another errand to perform
there. The widely rumoured determination of Vetranio and his associates
to destroy themselves by fire, in the frenzy of a last debauch--
disbelieved or disregarded while