As he crouches
by the pillar alone, he covers his forehead with his pale, palsied
hands, his dim eyes fill with bitter tears, and such expressions as
these are ever and anon faintly audible in the intervals of his heavy
sighs: 'Day after day! Day after day! And my lost one is not found!
my loved and wronged one is not restored! Antonina! Antonina!'
Some days after the public distribution of food in the square of St.
John Lateran, Vetranio's favourite freedman might have been observed
pursuing his way homeward, sadly and slowly, to his master's palace.
It was not without cause that the pace of the intelligent Carrio was
funereal and his expression disconsolate. Even during the short period
that had elapsed since the scene in the basilica already described, the
condition of the city had altered fearfully for the worse. The famine
advanced with giant strides; every succeeding hour endued it with new
vigour, every effort to repel it served but to increase its spreading
and overwhelming influence. One after another the pleasures and
pursuits of the city declined beneath the dismal oppression of the
universal ill, until the public spirit in Rome became moved alike in all
classes by one gloomy inspiration--a despairing defiance of the famine
and the Goths.
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