The house with
its neat thatched roof and shutters of variegated wood, the garden with
its small stock of fruit and its carefully tended beds of rare flowers,
designed probably to grace the feast of a nobleman or the statue of a
martyr, had presented no allurements to the rough tastes of Alaric's
soldiery. Not a mark of a footstep appeared on the turf before the
house door; the ivy crept in its wonted luxuriance about the pillars of
the lowly porch; and as Hermanric and Antonina walked towards the fish-
pond at the extremity of the garden, the few water-fowl placed there by
the owners of the cottage, came swimming towards the bank, as if to
welcome in their solitude the appearance of a human form.
Far from being melancholy, there was something soothing and attractive
about the loneliness of the deserted farm. Its ravaged outhouses and
plundered meadows, which might have appeared desolate by day, were so
distanced, softened, and obscured, by the atmosphere of night, that they
presented no harsh contrast to the prevailing smoothness and luxuriance
of the landscape around.
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