Her
head shook with a tremulous, palsied action; a leer, half smile, half
grimace, distended her withered lips and lightened her sunken eyes.
Sinister, cringing, repulsive; her face livid with the reflection from
the weapon that was her support, and her figure scarcely human in the
rugged garments that encompassed its gaunt proportions, she seemed a
deformity set up by evil spirits to mock the majesty of the human form--
an embodied satire on all that is most deplorable in infirmity and most
disgusting in age.
The instant she discerned Hermanric, she stretched her body out still
farther over the shield; and pointing to the interior of the waggon,
muttered softly that one fearful and expressive word--dead!
Without waiting for any further explanation, the young Goth mounted the
vehicle, and gaining the old woman's side, saw stretched on her
collection of herbs--beautiful in the sublime and melancholy stillness
of death--the corpse of Goisvintha's last child.
'Is Hermanric wroth?' whined the hag, quailing before the steady,
rebuking glance of the young man.
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