While the penitents who formed the procession above described were yet
engaged in the performance of their unnoticed and unshared duties of
penance and prayer, a priest ascended the great pulpit of the basilica,
to attempt the ungrateful task of preaching patience and piety to the
hungry multitude at his feet.
He began his sermon by retracing the principal occurrences in Rome since
the beginning of the Gothic blockade. He touched cautiously upon the
first event that stained the annals of the besieged city--the execution
of the widow of the Roman general Stilicho, on the unauthorised
suspicion that she had held treasonable communication with Alaric and
the invading army; he noticed lengthily the promises of assistance
transmitted from Ravenna, after the perpetration of that ill-omened act.
He spoke admiringly of the skill displayed by the government in making
the necessary and immediate reductions in the daily supplies of food; he
lamented the terrible scarcity which followed, too inevitably, those
seasonable reductions.
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