Forsaken as it appears on an outward view, during the morning of which
we now write, the house of Numerian is yet not tenantless. In one of
the sleeping apartments, stretched on his couch, with none to watch by
its side, lies the master of the little dwelling. We last beheld him on
the scene mingled with the famishing congregation in the Basilica of St.
John Lateran, still searching for his child amid the confusion of the
public distribution of food during the earlier stages of the misfortunes
of besieged Rome. Since that time he has toiled and suffered much; and
now the day of exhaustion, long deferred, the hours of helpless
solitude, constantly dreaded, have at length arrived.
From the first periods of the siege, while all around him in the city
moved gloomily onward through darker and darker changes, while famine
rapidly merged into pestilence and death, while human hopes and purposes
gradually diminished and declined with each succeeding day, he alone
remained ever devoted to the same labour, ever animated by the same
object--the only one among all his fellow-citizens whom no outward event
could influence for good or evil, for hope or fear.
In every street of Rome, at all hours, among all ranks of people, he was
still to be seen constantly pursuing the same hopeless search. When the
mob burst furiously into the public granaries to seize the last supplies
of corn hoarded for the rich, he was ready at the doors watching them as
they came out. When rows of houses were deserted by all but the dead,
he was beheld within, passing from window to window, as he sought
through each room for the treasure that he had lost. When some few
among the populace, in the first days of the pestilence, united in the
vain attempt to cast over the lofty walls the corpses that strewed the
street, he mingled with them to look on the rigid faces of the dead. In
solitary places, where the parent, not yet lost to affection, strove to
carry his dying child from the desert roadway to the shelter of a roof;
where the wife, still faithful to her duties, received her husband's
last breath in silent despair--he was seen gliding by their sides, and
for one brief instant looking on them with attentive and mournful eyes.
Wherever he went, whatever he beheld, he asked no sympathy and sought no
aid. He went his way, a pilgrim on a solitary path, an unregarded
expectant for a boon that no others would care to partake.
When the famine first began to be felt in the city, he seemed
unconscious of its approach--he made no effort to procure beforehand the
provision of a few days' sustenance; if he attended the first public
distributions of food, it was only to prosecute his search for his child
amid the throng around him. He must have perished with the first feeble
victims of starvation, had he not been met, during his solitary
wanderings, by some of the members of the congregation whom his piety
and eloquence had collected in former days.
By these persons, who entreaties that he would suspend his hopeless
search he always answered with the same firm and patient denial, his
course was carefully watched and his wants anxiously provided for. Out
of every supply of food which they were enabled to collect, his share
was invariably carried to his abode. They remembered their teacher in
the hour of his dejection, as they had formerly reverenced him in the
day of his vigour; they toiled to preserve his life as anxiously as they
had laboured to profit by his instructions; they listened as his
disciples once, they served him as his children now.
But over these, as over all other offices of human kindness, the famine
was destined gradually and surely to prevail. The provision of food
garnered up by the congregation ominously lessened with each succeeding
day. When the pestilence began darkly to appear, the numbers of those
who sought their afflicted teacher at his abode, or followed him through
the dreary streets, fatally decreased.
Then, as the nourishment which had supported, and the vigilance which
had watched him, thus diminished, so did the hard-tasked energies of the
unhappy father fail him faster and faster. Each morning as he arose,
his steps were more feeble, his heart grew heavier within him, his
wanderings through the city were less and less resolute and prolonged.
At length his powers totally deserted him; the last-left members of his
congregation, as they approached his abode with the last-left provision
of food which they possessed, found him prostrate with exhaustion at his
garden gate. They bore him to his couch, placed their charitable
offering by his side, and leaving one of their number to protect him
from the robber and the assassin, they quitted the house in despair.
For some days the guardian remained faithful to his post, until his
sufferings from lack of food overpowered his vigilance. Dreading that,
in his extremity, he might be tempted to take from the old man's small
store of provision what little remained, he fled from the house, to seek
sustenance, however loathsome, in the public streets; and thenceforth
Numerian was left defenceless in his solitary abode.
He was first beheld on the scenes which these pages present, a man of
austere purpose, of unwearied energy; a valiant reformer, who defied all
difficulties that beset him in his progress; a triumphant teacher,
leading at his will whoever listened to his words; a father, proudly
contemplating the future position which he destined for his child. Far
different did he now appear. Lost to his ambition, broken in spirit,
helpless in body, separated from his daughter by his own act, he lay on
his untended couch in a death-like lethargy. The cold wind blowing
through his opened window awakened no sensations in his torpid frame;
the cup of water and the small relics of coarse food stood near his
hand, but he had no vigilance to discern them. His open eyes looked
steadfastly upward, and yet he reposed as one in a deep sleep, or as one
already devoted to the tomb; save when, at intervals, his lips moved
slowly with a long and painfully drawn breath, or a fever flush tinged
his hollow cheek with changing and momentary hues.
While thus in outward aspect appearing to linger between life and death,
his faculties yet remained feebly vital within him. Aroused by no
external influence, and governed by no mental restraint, they now
created before him a strange waking vision, palpable as an actual event.
It seemed to him that he was reposing, not in his own chamber, but in
some mysterious world, filled with a twilight atmosphere, inexpressibly
soothing and gentle to his aching sight. Through this mild radiance he
could trace, at long intervals, shadowy representations of the scenes
through which he had passed in search of his lost child. The gloomy
streets, the lonely houses abandoned to the unburied dead, which he had
explored, alternately appeared and vanished before him in solemn
succession; and ever and anon, as one vision disappeared ere another
rose, he heard afar off a sound as of gentle, womanly voices, murmuring
in solemn accents, 'The search has been made in penitence, in patience,
in prayer, and has not been pursued in vain. The lost shall return--the
beloved shall yet be restored!'
Thus, as it had begun, the vision long continued. Now the scenes
through which he had wandered passed slowly before his eyes, now the
soft voices murmured pityingly in his ear. At length the first
disappeared, and the last became silent; then ensued a long vacant
interval, and then the grey, tranquil light brightened slowly at one
spot, out of which he beheld advancing towards him the form of his lost
child.
She came to his side, she bent lovingly over him; he saw her eyes, with
their old patient, childlike expression, looking sorrowfully down upon
him. His heart revived to a sense of unspeakable awe and contrition, to
emotions of yearning love and mournful hope; his speech returned; he
whispered tremulously, 'Child! child! I repented in bitter woe the wrong
that I did to thee; I sought thee, in my loneliness on earth, through
the long day and the gloomy night! And now the merciful God has sent
thee to pardon me! I loved thee; I wept for thee.'
His voice died within him, for now his outward sensations quickened. He
felt warm tears falling on his cheeks; he felt embracing arms clasped
round him; he heard tenderly repeated, 'Father! speak to me as you were
wont; love me, father, and forgive me, as you loved and forgave me when
I was a little child!'
The sound of that well-remembered voice--which had ever spoken kindly
and reverently to him; which had last addressed him in tones of
despairing supplication; which he had hardly hoped to hear again on
earth--penetrated his whole being, like awakening music in the dead
silence of night. His eyes lost their vacant expression; he raised
himself suddenly on the couch; he saw that what had begun as a vision
had ended as a reality; that his dream had proved the immediate fore-
runner of its own fulfilment; that his daughter in her bodily presence
was indeed restored; and his head drooped forward, and he trembled and
wept upon her bosom, in the overpowering fulness of his gratitude and
delight.
For some moments Antonina, calming with the resolute heroism of
affection her own thronging emotions of awe and affright, endeavoured to
soothe and support her fast-failing parent. Her horror almost
overwhelmed her, as she thought that now, when, through grief and peril,
she was at last restored to him, he might expire in her arms; but even
yet her resolution did not fail her. The last hope of her brief and
bitter life was now the hope of reviving her father, and she clung to it
with the tenacity of despair.
She calmed her voice while she spoke to him; she entreated him to
remember that his daughter had returned to watch over him, to be his
obedient pupil as in days of old. Vain effort! Even while the words
passed her lips, his arms, which had been pressed over her, relaxed; his
head grew heavier on her bosom. In the despair of the moment, she tore
herself from him, and looked round to seek the help that none were near
to afford. The cup of water, the last provision of food, attracted her
eye. With quick instinct she caught them up. Hope, success, salvation,
lay in those miserable relics. She pressed the food into his mouth; she
moistened his parched lips, his dry brow, with the water. During one
moment of horrible suspense she saw him still insensible; then the vital
functions revived; his eyes opened again and fixed famine-struck on the
wretched nourishment before him. He devoured it ravenously; he drained
the cup of water to its last drop; he sank back again on the couch. But
now the torpid blood moved once more in his veins; his heart beat less
and less feebly: he was saved. She saw it as she bent over him--saved
by the lost child in the hour of her return! It was a sensation of
ecstatic triumph and gratitude which no woeful remembrances had power to
embitter in its bright, sudden birth. She knelt down by the side of the
couch, almost crushed by her own emotions. Over the grave of the young
warrior she had raised her heart to Heaven in agony and grief, and now
by her father's side she poured forth her whole soul to her Creator in
trembling ejaculations of thankfulness and hope.
Thus--the one slowly recovering whatever of life and vigour yet
continued in his weakened frame, the other still filled with her all-
absorbing emotions of gratitude--the father and daughter long remained.
And now, as morning waned towards noon, the storm began to subside.
Gradually and solemnly the vast thunder-clouds rolled asunder, and the
bright blue heaven beyond appeared through their fantastic rifts. The
lessening rain-drops fell light and silvery to the earth, and breeze and
sunshine were wafted at fitful intervals over the plague-tainted
atmosphere of Rome. As yet, subdued by the shadows of the floating
clouds, the dawning sunbeams glittered softly through the windows of
Numerian's chamber. They played, warm and reviving, over his worn
features, like messengers of resurrection and hope from their native
heaven. Life seemed to expand within him under their fresh and gentle
ministering. Once more he raised himself, and turned towards his child;
and now his heart throbbed with a healthful joy, and his arms closed
round her, not in the helplessness of infirmity, but in the welcome of
love.
His words, when he spoke to her, fell at first almost inarticulately
from his lips--they were mingled together in confused phrases of
tenderness, contrition, thanksgiving. All the native enthusiasm of his
disposition, all the latent love for his child, which had for years been
suppressed by his austerity, or diverted by his ambition, now at last
burst forth.
Trembling and silent in his arms, Antonina vainly endeavoured to return
his caresses and to answer his words of welcome. Now for the first time
she knew how deep was her father's affection for her; she felt how
foreign to his real nature had been his assumed severity in their
intercourse of former days; and in the quick flow of new feelings and
old recollections produced by the delighting surprise of the discovery,
she found herself speechless. She could only listen eagerly,
breathlessly, while he spoke. His words, faltering and confused though
they were, were words of endearment which she had never heard from him
before; they were words which no mother had ever pronounced beside her
infant bed, and they sank divinely consoling over her heart, as messages
of pardon from an angel's lips.
Gradually Numerian's voice grew calmer. He raised his daughter in his
arms, and bent wistfully on her face his attentive and pitying eyes.
'Returned, returned!' he murmured, while he gazed on her, 'never again
to depart! Returned, beautiful and patient, kinder and more tender than
ever! Love me and pardon me, Antonina. I sought for you in bitter
loneliness and despair. Think not of me as what I was, but as what I
am! There were days when you were an infant, when I had no thought but
how to cherish and delight you, and now those days have come again. You
shall read no gloomy task-books; you shall never be separated from me
more; you shall play sweet music on the lute; you shall be all garlanded
with flowers which I will provide for you! We will find friends and
glad companions; we will bring happiness with us wherever we are seen.
God's blessing goes forth from children like you--it has fallen upon
me--it has raised me from the dead! My Antonina shall teach me to
worship, as I once taught her. She shall pray for me in the morning,
and pray for me at night; and when she thinks not of it, when she
sleeps, I shall come softly to her bedside, and wait and watch over her,
so that when she opens her eyes they shall open on me--they are the eyes
of my child who has been restored to me--there is nothing on earth that
can speak to me like them of happiness and peace!'
He paused for a moment, and looked rapturously on her face as it was
turned towards him. His features partially saddened while he gazed, and
taking her long hair, still wet and dishevelled from the rain, in his
hands, he pressed it over his lips, over his face, over his neck. Then,
when he saw that she was endeavouring to speak, when he beheld the tears
that were now filling her eyes, he drew her closer to him, and hurriedly
continued in lower tones--
'Hush! hush! No more grief, no more tears! Tell me not whither you
have wandered--speak not of what you have suffered; for would not every
word be a reproach to me? And you have come to pardon and not to
reproach! Let not the recollection that it was I who cast you off be
forced on me from your lips; let us remember only that we are restored
to each other; let us think that God has accepted my penitence and
forgiven me my sin, in suffering my child to return! Or, if we must
speak of the days of separation that are past, speak to me of the days
that found you tranquil and secure; rejoice me by telling me that it was
not all danger and woe in the bitter destiny which my guilty anger
prepared for my own child! Say to me that you met protectors as well as
enemies in the hour of your flight--that all were not harsh to you as I
was--that those of whom you asked shelter and safety looked on your face
as on a petition for charity and kindness from friends whom they loved!
Tell me only of your protectors, Antonina, for in that there will be
consolation; and you have come to console!'
As he waited for her reply he felt her tremble on his bosom, he saw the
shudder that ran over her frame. The despair in her voice, thought she
only pronounced in answer to him the simple words, 'There was one'--and
then ceased, unable to proceed--penetrated coldly to his heart.
'Is he not at hand?' he hurriedly resumed. 'Why is he not here? Let us
seek him without delay. I must humble myself before him in my
gratitude. I must show him that I was worthy that my Antonina should be
restored.'
'He is dead!' she gasped, sinking down in the arms that embraced her, as
the recollections of the past night again crowded in all their horror on
her memory. 'They murdered him by my side. O father! father! he loved
me; he would have reverenced and protected you!'
'May the merciful God receive him among the blessed angels, and honour
him among the holy martyrs!' cried the father, raising his tearful eyes
in supplication. 'May his spirit, if it can still be observant of the
things of earth, know that his name shall be written on my heart with
the name of my child; that I will think on him as on a beloved
companion, and mourn for him as a son that has been taken from me!'
He ceased, and looked down on Antonina, whose features were still hidden
from him. Each felt that a new bond of mutual affection had been
created between them by what each had spoken; but both now remained
silent.
During this interval the thoughts of Numerian wandered from the
reflections which had hitherto occupied him. The few mournful words
which his daughter had spoken had been sufficient to banish its fulness
of joy from his heart, and to turn him from the happy contemplation of
the present to the dark recollections of the past. Vague doubts and
fears now mingled with his gratitude and hope, and involuntarily his
thoughts reverted to what he would fain have forgotten for ever--to the
morning when he had driven Antonina from her home.
Baseless apprehensions of the return of the treacherous Pagan and his
profligate employer, with the return of their victim--despairing
convictions of his own helplessness and infirmity rose startlingly in
his mind. His eyes wandered vacantly round the room, his hands closed
trembling over his daughter's form; then, suddenly releasing her, he
arose as one panic-stricken, and exclaiming, 'The doors must be
secured--Ulpius may be near--the senator may return!' endeavoured to
cross the room. But his strength was unequal to the effort; he leaned
back for support against the wall, and breathlessly repeating, 'Secure
the doors--Ulpius, Ulpius!' he motioned to Antonina to descend.
She trembled as she obeyed him. Remembering her passage through the
breach in the wall, and her fearful journey through the streets of Rome,
she more than shared her father's apprehensions as she descended the
stairs.
The door remained half open, as she had left it when she entered the
house. Ere she hurriedly closed and barred it, she cast a momentary
glance on the street beyond. The gaunt figures of the slaves still
moved wearily to and fro, amid the mockery of festal preparation in
Vetranio's palace; and here and there a few ghastly figures lay on the
ground contemplating them in languid amazement. Over all other parts of
the street the deadly tranquillity of plague and famine still prevailed.
Hurriedly ascending the steps, Antonina hastened to assure her father
that she had obeyed his commands, and that they were now secure from all
intrusion from without. But, during her brief absence, a new and more
ominous prospect of calamity had presented itself before the old man's
mind.
As she entered the room, she saw that he had returned to his couch, and
that he was holding before him the little wooden bowl which had
contained his last supply of food, and which was now empty. He addressed
not a word to her when he heard her enter; his features were rigid with
horror and despair as he looked down on the empty bowl; he muttered
vacantly, 'It was the last provision that remained, and it was I that
exhausted it! The beasts of the forest carry food to their young, and I
have taken the last morsel from my child!'
In an instant the utter desolateness of their situation--forgotten in
the first joy of their meeting--forced itself with appalling vividness
upon Antonina's mind. She endeavoured to speak of comfort and hope to
her father; but the fearful realities of the famine in the city now rose
palpably before her, and suspended the vain words of solace on her lips.
In the midst of still populous Rome, within sight of those surrounding
plains where the creative sun ripened hour by hour the vegetation of the
teeming earth, where field and granary displayed profusely their
abundant stores, the father and daughter now looked on each other, as
helpless to replace their exhausted provision of food as if they had
been abandoned on the raft of the shipwrecked in an unexplored sea, or
banished to a lonely island whose inland products were withered by
infected winds, and around whose arid shores ran such destroying waters
as seethe over the 'Cities of the Plain'.
The silence which had long prevailed in the room, the bitter reflections
which still held the despairing father and the patient daughter
speechless alike, were at length interrupted by a hollow and melancholy
voice from the street, pronouncing, in the form of a public notice,
these words:--
'I, Publius Dalmatius, messenger of the Roman Senate, proclaim, that in
order to clear the streets from the dead, three thousand sestertii will
be given by the Prefect for every ten bodies that are cast over the
walls. This is the true decree of the Senate.'
The voice ceased; but no sound of applause, no murmur of popular tumult
was heard in answer. Then, after an interval, it was once more faintly
audible as the messenger passed on and repeated the decree in another
street; and then the silence again sank down over all things more
awfully pervading than before.
Every word of the proclamation, when repeated in the distance as when
spoken under his window, had clearly reached Numerian's ears. His mind,
already sinking in despair, was riveted on what he had heard from the
woe-boding voice of the herald, with a fascination as absorbing as that
which rivets the eye of the traveller, already giddy on the summit of a
precipice, upon the spectacle of the yawning gulfs beneath. When all
sound of the proclamation had finally died away, the unhappy father
dropped the empty bowl which he had hitherto mechanically continued to
hold before him, and glancing affrightedly at his daughter, groaned to
himself: 'The corpses are to be cast over the walls--the dead are to be
flung forth to the winds of heaven--there is no help for us in the city.
O God, God!--she may die!--her body may be cast away like the rest, and
I may live to see it!'
He rose suddenly from the couch; his reason seemed for a moment to be
shaken as he tottered to the window, crying, 'Food! food!--I will give
my house and all it contains for a morsel of food. I have nothing to
support my own child--she will starve before me by tomorrow if I have no
food! I am a citizen of Rome--I demand help from the Senate! Food!
food!'
In tones declining lower and lower he continued to cry thus from the
window, but no voice answered him either in sympathy or derision. Of
all the people--now increased in numbers--collected in the street before
Vetranio's palace, no one turned even to look on him. For days and days
past, such fruitless appeals as his had been heard, and heard
unconcernedly, at every hour and in every street of Rome--now ringing
through the heavy air in the shrieks of delirium; now faintly audible in
the last faltering murmurs of exhaustion and despair.
Thus vainly entreating help and pity from a populace who had ceased to
give the one or to feel the other, Numerian might long have remained;
but now his daughter approached his side, and drawing him gently towards
his couch, said in tender and solemn accents: 'Remember, father, that
God sent the ravens to feed Elijah, and replenished the widow's cruse!
He will not desert us, for He has restored us to each other, and has
sent me hither not to perish in the famine, but to watch over you!'
'God has deserted the city and all that it contains!' he answered
distractedly. 'The angel of destruction has gone forth into our
streets, and death walks in his shadow! On this day, when hope and
happiness seemed opening before us both; our little household has been
doomed! The young and the old, the weary and the watchful, they strew
the streets alike--the famine has mastered them all--the famine will
master us--there is no help, no escape! I, who would have died
patiently for my daughter's safety, must now die despairing, leaving her
friendless in the wide, dreary, perilous world; in the dismal city of
anguish, of horror, of death--where the enemy threatens without, and
hunger and pestilence waste within! O Antonina! you have returned to me
but for a little time; the day of our second separation draws near!'
For a few moments his head drooped, and his sobs choked his utterance;
then he once more rose painfully to his feet. Heedless of Antonina's
entreaties, he again endeavoured to cross the room, only again to find
his feeble powers unequal to sustain him. As he fell back panting upon
a seat, his eyes assumed a wild, unnatural expression--despair of mind
and weakness of body had together partially unhinged his faculties.
When his daughter affrightedly approached to soothe and succour him, he
impatiently waved her back; and began to speak in a dull, hoarse,
monotonous voice, pressing his hand firmly over his brow, and directing
his eyes backwards and forwards incessantly, on object after object, in
every part of the room.
'Listen, child, listen!' he hastily began. 'I tell you there is no food
in the house, and no food in Rome!--we are besieged--they have taken
from us our granaries in the suburbs, and our fields on the plains--
there is a great famine in the city--those who still eat, eat strange
food which men sicken at when it is named. I would seek even this, but
I have no strength to go forth into the byways and force it from others
at the point of the sword! I am old and feeble, and heart-broken--I
shall die first, and leave fatherless my good, kind daughter, whom I
sought for so long, and whom I loved as my only child!'
He paused for an instant, not to listen to the words of encouragement
and hope which Antonina mechanically addressed to him while he spoke,
but to collect his wandering thoughts, to rally his failing strength.
His voice acquired a quicker tone, and his features presented a sudden
energy and earnestness of expression, as if some new project had flashed
across his mind, when, after an interval, he continued thus:--
'But though my child shall be bereaved of me, though I shall die in the
hour when I most longed to live for her, I must not leave her helpless;
I will send her among my congregation who have deserted me, but who will
repent when they hear that I am dead, and will receive Antonina among
them for my sake! Listen to this--listen, listen! You must tell them
to remember all that I once revealed to them of my brother, from whom I
parted in my boyhood--my brother, whom I have never seen since. He may
yet be alive, he may be found--they must search for him; for to you he
would be father to the fatherless, and guardian to the unguarded--he may
now be in Rome, he may be rich and powerful--he may have food to spare,
and shelter that is good against all enemies and strangers! Attend,
child, to my words: in these latter days I have thought of him much; I
have seen him in dreams as I saw him for the last time in my father's
house; he was happier and more beloved than I was, and in envy and
hatred I quitted my parents and parted from him. You have heard nothing
of this; but you must hear it now, that when I am dead you may know you
have a protector to seek! So I received in anger my brother's farewell,
and fled from my home--(those days were well remembered by me once, but
all things grow dull on my memory now). Long years of turmoil and
change passed on, and I never met him; and men of many nations were my
companions, but he was not among them; then much affliction fell upon
me, and I repented and learnt the fear of God, and went back to my
father's house. Since that, years have passed--I know not how many. I
could have told them when I spoke of my former life to him--to my
friend, when we stood near St. Peter's, ere the city was besieged,
looking on the sunset, and speaking of the early days of our
companionship; but now my very remembrance fails me; the famine that
threatens us with separation and death casts darkness over my thoughts;
yet hear me, hear me patiently--for your sake I must continue!'
'Not now, father--not now! At another time, on a happier day!' murmured
Antonina, in tremulous, entreating tones.
'My home, when I arrived to look on it, was gone,' pursued the old man
sadly, neither heeding nor hearing her. 'Other houses were built where
my father's house had stood; no man could tell me of my parents and my
brother; then I returned, and my former companions grew hateful in my
eyes; I left them, and they followed me with persecution and scorn.--
Listen, listen!--I set forth secretly in the night, with you, to escape
them, and to make perfect my reformation where they should not be near
to hinder it; and we travelled onward many days until we came to Rome,
and I made my abode there. But I feared that my companions whom I
abhorred might discover and persecute me again, and in the new city of
my dwelling I called myself by another name than the name that I bore;
thus I knew that all trace of me would be lost, and that I should be
kept secure from men whom I thought on only as enemies now. Go, child!
go quickly!--bring your tablets and write down the names that I shall
tell you; for so you will discover your protector when I am gone! Say
not to him that you are the child of Numerian--he knows not the name;
say that you are the daughter of Cleander, his brother, who died longing
to be restored to him. Write--write carefully, Cleander!--that was the
name my father gave to me; that was the name I bore until I fled from my
evil companions and changed it, dreading their pursuit! Cleander! write
and remember, Cleander! I have seen in visions that my brother shall be
discovered: he will not be discovered to me, but he will be discovered
to you! Your tablets--your tablets!--write his name with mine--it is--'
He stopped abruptly. His mental powers, fluctuating between torpor and
animation--shaken, but not overpowered by the trials which had assailed
them--suddenly rallied, and resuming somewhat of their accustomed
balance, became awakened to a sense of their own aberration. His vague
revelations of his past life (which the reader will recognise as
resembling his communications on the same subject to the fugitive land-
owner, previously related) now appeared before him in all their
incongruity and uselessness. His countenance fell--he sighed bitterly
to himself: 'My reason begins to desert me!--my judgment, which should
guide my child--my resolution, which should uphold her, both fail me!
How should my brother, since childhood lost to me, be found by her?
Against the famine that threatens us I offer but vain words! Already
her strength declines; her face, that I loved to look on grows wan
before my eyes! God have mercy upon us!--God have mercy upon us!'
He returned feebly to his couch; his head declined on his bosom;
sometimes a low groan burst from his lips, but he spoke no more.
Deep as was the prostration under which he had now fallen, it was yet
less painful to Antonina to behold it than to listen to the incoherent
revelations which had fallen from his lips but the moment before, and
which, in her astonishment and affright, she had dreaded might be the
awful indications of the overthrow of her father's reason. As she again
placed herself by his side, she trembled to feel that her own weariness
was fast overpowering her; but she still struggled with her rising
despair--still strove to think only of capacity for endurance and
chances of relief.
The silence in the room was deep and dismal while they now sat together.
The faint breezes, at long intervals, drowsily rose and fell as they
floated through the open window; the fitful sunbeams alternately
appeared and vanished as the clouds rolled upward in airy succession
over the face of heaven. Time moved sternly in its destined progress,
and Nature varied tranquilly through its appointed limits of change, and
still no hopes, no saving projects, nothing but dark recollections and
woeful anticipations occupied Antonina's mind; when, just as her weary
head was drooping towards the ground, just as sensation and fortitude
and grief itself seemed declining into a dreamless and deadly sleep, a
last thought, void of discernible connection or cause, rose suddenly
within her--animating, awakening, inspiring. She started up. 'The
garden, father--the garden!' she cried breathlessly. 'Remember the food
that grows in our garden below! Be comforted, we have provision left
yet--God has not deserted us!'
He raised his face while she spoke; his features assumed a deeper
mournfulness and hopelessness of expression; he looked upon her in
ominous silence, and laid his trembling fingers on her arm to detain
her, when she hurriedly attempted to quit the room.
'Do not forbid me to depart,' she anxiously pleaded. 'To me every
corner in the garden is known; for it was my possession in our happier
days--our last hopes rest in the garden, and I must search through it
without delay! Bear with me,' she added, in low and melancholy
tones--'bear with m e, dear father, in all that I would now do! I have
suffered, since we parted, a bitter affliction, which clings dark and
heavy to all my thoughts--there is no consolation for me but the
privilege of caring for your welfare--my only hope of comfort is in the
employment of aiding you!'
The old man's hand had pressed heavier on her arm while she addressed
him; but when she ceased it dropped from her, and he bent his head in
speechless submission to her entreaty.
For one moment she lingered, looking on him silent as himself; the next,
she left the apartment with hasty and uncertain steps.
On reaching the garden, she unconsciously took the path leading to the
bank where she had once loved to play secretly upon her lute and to look
on the distant mountains reposing in the warm atmosphere which summer
evenings shed over their blue expanse. How eloquent was this little
plot of ground of the quiet events now for ever gone by!--of the joys,
the hopes, the happy occupations, which rise with the day that
chronicles them, and pass like that day, never to return the same!--
which the memory alone can preserve as they were, and the heart can
never resume but in a changed form, divested of the presence of the
companion of the incident of the departed moment, which formed the charm
of the past and makes the imperfection of the present.
Tender and thronging were the remembrances which the surrounding
prospect called up, as the sad mistress of the garden looked again on
her little domain! She saw the bank where she could never more sit to
sing with a renewal of the same feelings which had once inspired her
music; she saw the drooping flowers that she could never restore with
the same childlike enjoyment of the task which had animated her in
former hours! Young though she still was, the emotions of the youthful
days that were gone could never be revived as they had once existed! As
waters they had welled up, and as waters they had flowed forth, never to
return to their source! Thoughts of these former years--of the young
warrior who lay cold beneath the heavy earth--of the desponding father
who mourned hopeless in the room above--gathered thick at her heart as
she turned from her flower-beds--not, as in other days, to pour forth
her happiness to the music of her lute, but to search laboriously for
the sustenance of life.
At first, as she stooped over those places in the garden where she knew
that fruits and vegetables had been planted by her own hand, her tears
blinded her. She hastily dashed them away, and looked eagerly around.
Alas! others had reaped the field from which she had hoped abundance!
In the early days of the famine Numerian's congregation had entered the
garden, and gathered for him whatever it contained; its choicest and its
homeliest products were alike exhausted; withered leaves lay on the
barren earth, and naked branches waved over them in the air. She
wandered from path to path, searching amid the briars and thistles,
which already cast an aspect of ruin over the deserted place; she
explored its most hidden corners with the painful perseverance of
despair; but the same barrenness spread around her wherever she turned.
On this once fertile spot, which she had entered with such joyful faith
in its resources, there remained but a few poor decayed roots, dropped
and forgotten amid tangled weeds and faded flowers.
She saw that they were barely sufficient for one scanty meal as she
collected them and returned slowly to the house. No words escaped her,
no tears flowed over her cheeks when she reascended the steps--hope,
fear, thought, sensation itself had been stunned within her from the
first moment when she had discovered that, in the garden as in the
house, the inexorable famine had anticipated the last chances of relief.
She entered the room, and, still holding the withered roots, advanced
mechanically to her father's side. During her absence his mental and
bodily faculties had both yielded to wearied nature--he lay in a deep,
heavy sleep.
Her mind experienced a faint relief when she saw that the fatal
necessity of confessing the futility of the hopes she had herself
awakened was spared her for a while. She knelt down by Numerian, and
gently smoothed the hair over his brow; then she drew the curtain across
the window, for she feared even that the breeze blowing through it might
arouse him.
A strange, secret satisfaction at the idea of devoting to her father
every moment of the time and every particle of the strength that might
yet be reserved for her; a ready resignation to death in dying for him--
overspread her heart, and took the place of all other aspirations and
all other thoughts.
She now moved to and fro through the room with a cautious tranquillity
which nothing could startle; she prepared her decayed roots for food
with a patient attention which nothing could divert. Lost, through the
aggravated miseries of her position, to recent grief and present
apprehension, she could still instinctively perform the simple offices
of the woman and the daughter, as she might have performed them amid a
peaceful nation and a prosperous home. Thus do the first-born
affections outlast the exhaustion of all the stormy emotions, all the
aspiring thoughts of after years, which may occupy, but which cannot
absorb, the spirit within us; thus does their friendly and familiar
voice, when the clamour of contending passions has died away in its own
fury, speak again, serene and sustaining as in the early time, when the
mind moved secure within the limits of its native simplicity, and the
heart yet lay happy in the pure tranquillity of its first repose!
The last scanty measure of food was soon prepared; it was bitter and
unpalatable when she tasted it--life could barely be preserved, even in
the most vigorous, by provision so wretched; but she set it aside as
carefully as if it had been the most precious luxury of the most
abundant feast.
Nothing had changed during the interval of her solitary employment--her
father yet slept; the gloomy silence yet prevailed in the street. She
placed herself at the window, and partially drew aside the curtain to
let the warm breezes from without blow over her cold brow. The same
ineffable resignation, the same unnatural quietude, which had sunk down
over her faculties since she had entered the room, overspread them
still. Surrounding objects failed to impress her attention;
recollections and forebodings stagnated in her mind. A marble composure
prevailed over her features. Sometimes her eyes wandered mechanically
from the morsels of food by her side to her sleeping father, as her one
vacant idea of watching for his service, till the feeble pulses of life
had throbbed their last, alternately revived and declined; but no other
evidences of bodily existence or mental activity appeared in her. As
she now sat in the half-darkened room, by the couch on which her father
reposed--her features pale, calm, and rigid, her form enveloped in cold
white drapery--there were moments when she looked like one of the
penitential devotees of the primitive Church, appointed to watch in the
house of mourning, and surprised in her saintly vigil by the advent of
Death.
Time flowed on--the monotonous hours of the day waned again towards
night; and plague and famine told their lapse in the fated highways of
Rome. For father and child the sand in the glass was fast running out,
and neither marked it as it diminished. The sleeper still reposed, and
the guardian by his side still watched; but now her weary gaze was
directed on the street, unconsciously attracted by the sound of voices
which at length rose from it at intervals, and by the light of the
torches and lamps which appeared in the great palace of the senator
Vetranio, as the sun gradually declined in the horizon, and the fiery
clouds around were quenched in the vapours of the advancing night.
Steadily she looked upon the sight beneath and before her; but even yet
her limbs never moved; no expression relieved the blank, solemn
peacefulness of her features.
Meanwhile, the soft, brief twilight glimmered over the earth, and showed
the cold moon, poised solitary in the starless heaven; then, the
stealthy darkness arose at her pale signal, and closed slowly round the
City of Death!