'What fool or madman!' he
cried, fixing his eyes in furious scorn and indignation on the
stranger's face, 'prates to me about the legions of Ravenna and the
dangers of an assault! Think you, renegade, that your city could have
resisted me had I chosen to storm it on the first day when I encamped
before its walls? Know you that your effeminate soldiery have laid
aside the armour of their ancestors, because their puny bodies are too
feeble to bear its weight, and that the half of my army here trebles the
whole number of the guards of Rome? Now, while you stand before me, I
have but to command, and the city shall be annihilated with fire and
sword, without the aid of one of the herd of traitors cowering beneath
the shelter of its ill-defended walls!'
As Alaric spoke thus, some invisible agency seemed to crush, body and
mind, the lost wretch whom he addressed. The shock of such an answer as
he now heard seemed to strike him idiotic, as a flash of lightning
strikes with blindness. He regarded the king with a bewildered stare,
waving his hand tremulously backwards and forwards before his face, as
if to clear some imaginary darkness off his eyes; then his arm fell
helpless by his side, his head drooped upon his breast, and he moaned
out in low, vacant tones, 'The restoration of the gods--that is the
condition of conquest--the restoration of the gods!'
'I come not hither to be the tool of a frantic and forgotten
priesthood,' cried Alaric disdainfully.
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