It is for
this that I now abstain from storming your city, to encircle it with an
immovable blockade!'
As the declaration of his great mission burst thus from the lips of the
Gothic king, the spirit of his lofty ambition seemed to diffuse itself
over his outward form. His noble stature, his fine proportions, his
commanding features, became invested with a simple, primeval grandeur.
Contrasted as he now was with the shrunken figure of the spirit-broken
stranger, he looked almost sublime.
A succession of protracted shuddering ran through the Pagan's frame, but
he neither wept nor spoke. The unavailing defence of the Temple of
Serapis, the defeated revolution at Alexandria, and the abortive
intrigue with Vetranio, were now rising on his memory, to heighten the
horror of his present and worst overthrow. Every circumstance connected
with his desperate passage through the rifted wall revived, fearfully
vivid, on his mind. He remembered all the emotions of his first night's
labour in the darkness, all the miseries of his second night's torture
under the fallen brickwork, all the woe, danger, and despondency that
accompanied his subsequent toil--persevered in under the obstructions of
a famine-weakened body and a helpless arm--until he passed, in delusive
triumph, the last of the hindrances in the long-laboured breach.
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