Once more she entered the Campus Martius. Again she passed the public
fountains, still unnaturally devoted to serve as beds for the dying and
as sepulchres for the dead; again she trod the dreary highways, where
the stronger among the famished populace yet paced hither and thither in
ferocious silence and unsocial separation. No word was addressed,
hardly a look was directed to her, as she pursued her solitary course.
She was desolate among the desolate; forsaken among others abandoned
like herself.
The robber, when he passed her by, saw that she was worthless for the
interests of plunder as the poorest of the dying citizens around him.
The patrician, loitering feebly onward to the shelter of his palace
halls, avoided her as a new suppliant among the people for the charity
which he had not to bestow, and quickened his pace as she approached him
in the street. Unprotected, yet unmolested, hurrying from her
loneliness and her bitter recollections to the refuge of her father's
love, as she would have hurried when a child from her first apprehension
of ill to the refuge of her father's arms, she gained at length the foot
of the Pincian Hill--at length ascended the streets so often trodden in
the tranquil days of old!
The portals and outer buildings of Vetranio's palace, as she passed
them, presented a striking and ominous spectacle.
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