Here,
appeared a young girl struggling, half entombed in shields. There,
gasped an emaciated camp-follower, nearly suffocated in heaps of furs.
The whole scene, with its background of great woods, drenched in a
vapour of misty rain, with its striking contrasts at one point and its
solemn harmonies at another, presented a vast combination of objects
that either startled or awed--a gloomy conjunction of the menacing and
the sublime.
Bidding Goisvintha wait near the waggon, one of her conductors
approached and motioned aside a young man standing near the king. As
the warrior rose to obey the demand, he displayed, with all the physical
advantages of his race, and ease and elasticity of movement unusual
among the men of his nation. At the instant when he joined the soldier
who had accosted him, his face was partially concealed by an immense
helmet, crowned with a boar's head, the mouth of which, forced open at
death, gaped wide, as if still raging for prey. But the man had
scarcely stated his errand, when he started violently, removed the grim
appendage of war, and hastened bare-headed to the side of the waggon
where Goisvintha awaited his approach.
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