All things whirled before my eyes. I could not speak--
I could not stop--I could not weep. I fled and fled I knew not whither,
until I sank down exhausted at the door of a small house on the
outskirts of the suburbs. Then I called for aid, but no one was by to
hear me. I crept--for I could stand no longer--into the house. It was
empty. I looked from the windows: no human figure passed through the
silent streets. The roar of a mighty confusion still rose from the
walls of the city, but I was left to listen to it alone. In the house I
saw scattered on the floor some fragments of bread and an old garment.
I took them both, and then rose and departed; for the silence of the
place was horrible to me, and I remembered the fields and the plains
that I had once loved to look on, and I thought that I might find there
the refuge that had been denied to me at Rome! So I set forth once more;
and when I gained the soft grass, and sat down beside the shady trees,
and saw the sunlight brightening over the earth, my heart grew sad, and
I wept as I thought on my loneliness and remembered my father's anger.
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