In the destinies of woe committed to the keeping of the night, the pagan
had been fatally included. The destruction that had gone forth against
the body of the young man who lay beneath the earth had overtaken the
mind of the old man who stood over his simple grave. The frame of
Ulpius, with all its infirmities, was still there, but the soul of
ferocious patience and unconquerable daring that had lighted it grandly
in its ruin was gone. Over the long anguish of that woeful life the
veil of self-oblivion had closed for ever!
He had been dismissed by Alaric, but he had not returned to the city
whither he was bidden. Throughout the night he had wandered about the
lonely suburbs, striving in secret and horrible suffering for the
mastery of his mind. There did the overthrow of all his hopes from the
Goths expand rapidly into the overthrow of the whole intellect that had
created his aspirations. There had reason burst the bonds that had so
long chained, perverted, degraded it! At length, wandering hither and
thither, he had dragged the helpless body, possessed no longer by the
perilous mind, to the farm-house garden in which he now stood, gazing
alternately at the upturned sods of the chieftain's grave and the red
gleam of the fire as it glowed from the dreary room through the gap of
the shattered door.
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