Ch. 27 - The Vigil of Hope

A new prospect now opens before us. The rough paths through which we
have hitherto threaded our way grow smoother as we approach their close.
Rome, so long dark and gloomy to our view, brightens at length like a
landscape when the rain is past and the first rays of returning sunlight
stream through the parting clouds. Some days have elapsed, and in those
days the temples have yielded all their wealth; the conquered Romans
have bribed the triumphant barbarians to mercy; the ransom of the fallen
city has been paid.

The Gothic army is still encamped round the walls, but the gates are
opened, markets for food are established in the suburbs, boats appear on
the river and waggons on the highroads, laden with provisions, and
proceeding towards Rome. All the hidden treasure kept back by the
citizens is now bartered for food; the merchants who hold the market
reap a rich harvest of spoil, but the hungry are filled, the weak are
revived, every one is content.

It is the end of the second day since the free sale of provisions and
the liberty of egress from the city have been permitted by the Goths.
The gates are closed for the night, and the people are quietly
returning, laden with their supplies of food, to their homes. Their
eyes no longer encounter the terrible traces of the march of pestilence
and famine through every street; the corpses have been removed, and the
sick are watched and sheltered. Rome is cleansed from her pollutions,
and the virtues of household life begin to revive wherever they once
existed. Death has thinned every family, but the survivors again
assemble together in the social hall. Even the veriest criminals, the
lowest outcasts of the population, are united harmlessly for a while in
the general participation of the first benefits of peace.

To follow the citizens to their homes; to trace in their thoughts,
words, and action the effect on them of their deliverance from the
horrors of the blockade; to contemplate in the people of a whole city,
now recovering as it were from a deep swoon, the varying forms of the
first reviving symptoms in all classes, in good and bad, rich and poor--
would afford matter enough in itself for a romance of searching human
interest, for a drama of the passions, moving absorbingly through
strange, intricate, and contrasted scenes. But another employment than
this now claims our care. It is to an individual, and not to a divided
source of interest, that our attention turns; we relinquish all
observations on the general mass of the populace to revert to Numerian
and Antonina alone--to penetrate once more into the little dwelling on
the Pincian Hill.

The apartment where the father and daughter had suffered the pangs of
famine together during the