Yet, vivid as these remembrances were, they
weakened none of those feelings of passionate devotion to Antonina by
which their influence within him had hitherto been overcome. They
existed with them--the old recollections with the new emotions--the
stern rebukings of the warrior's nature with the anxious forebodings of
the lover's heart. And now, his mysterious meeting with Ulpius;
Goisvintha's unexpected return to health; the dreary rising and furious
progress of the night tempest, began to impress his superstitious mind
as a train of unwonted and meaning incidents, destined to mark the fatal
return of his kinswoman's influence over his own actions and Antonina's
fate.
One by one, his memory revived with laborious minuteness every incident
that had attended his different interviews with the Roman girl, from the
first night when she had strayed into his tent to the last happy evening
that he had spent with her at the deserted farm-house. Then tracing
further backwards the course of his existence, he figured to himself his
meeting with Goisvintha among the Italian Alps; his presence at the
death of her last child, and his solemn engagement, on hearing her
recital of the massacre at Aquileia, to avenge her on the Romans with
his own hands.
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