But as the night still deepened, this one space of light faded,
contracted, vanished, and with it disappeared the sentinel and the line
of rampart on which he was posted. The rule of the darkness now became
universal. Densely and rapidly it overspread the whole city with
startling suddenness; as if the fearful destiny now working its
fulfilment in Rome had forced the external appearances of the night into
harmony with its own woe-boding nature.
Then, as the young Goth still lingered at his post of observation, the
long, low, tremulous, absorbing roll of thunder afar off became grandly
audible. It seemed to proceed from a distance almost incalculable; to
be sounding from its cradle in the frozen north; to be journeying about
its ice-girdled chambers in the lonely poles. It deepened rather than
interrupted the dreary, mysterious stillness of the atmosphere. The
lightning, too, had a summer softness in its noiseless and frequent
gleam. It was not the fierce lightning of winter, but a warm, fitful
brightness, almost fascinating in its light, rapid recurrence, tinged
with the glow of heaven, and not with the glare of hell.
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