Famished and
despairing, the sentinel crouched on the fortifications which he had now
neither strength to pace nor care to defend, yearning for the food that
he had no hope to obtain, as he watched the grey daybreak from his
solitary post.
While he was thus occupied, the gloomy silence of the scene was suddenly
broken by the sound of falling brick-work at the inner base of the wall,
followed by faint entreaties for mercy and deliverance, which rose on
his ear, strangely mingled with disjointed expression of defiance and
exultation from a second voice. He slowly turned his head, and, looking
down, saw on the ground beneath a young girl struggling in the grasp of
an old man, who was hurrying her onward in the direction of the Pincian
Gate.
For one moment the girl's eye met the sentinel's vacant glance, and she
renewed, with a last effort of strength, and a greater vehemence of
supplication, her cries for help; but the soldier neither moved nor
answered. Exhausted as he was, no sight could affect him now but the
sight of food.
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