I say to the Goths--with thousands who suffer the same
tribulation that I now undergo--"Enter our gates! Level our palaces to
the ground! Confound, if you will, in one common slaughter, we that are
victims with those that are tyrants! Your invasion will bring new lords
to the land. They cannot crush it more--they may oppress it less. Our
posterity may gain their rights by the sacrifice of lives that our
country has made worthless. Romans though we are, we are ready to
suffer and submit!"'
He stopped; for by this time he had lashed himself into fury. His eyes
glared, his cheeks flushed, his voice rose. Could he then have seen the
faintest vision of the destiny that future ages had in store for the
posterity of the race that now suffered throughout civilised Europe,
like him--could he have imagined how, in after years, the 'middle
class', despised in his day, was to rise to privilege and power; to hold
in its just hands the balance of the prosperity of nations; to crush
oppression and regulate rule; to soar in its mighty flight above thrones
and principalities, and rank and riches, apparently obedient, but really
commanding;--could he but have foreboded this, what a light must have
burst upon his gloom, what a hope must have soothed him in his despair!
To what further extremities his anger might have carried him, to what
proceedings the indignant Gordian, who still listened from his
concealment, might have had recourse, it is difficult to say; for the
complaints of the ill-fated landholder and the cogitations of the
authoritative bailiff were alike suddenly suspended by an uproar raging
at this moment round a carriage which had just emerged from the palace
we have elsewhere described.
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