This is the true decree of the Senate.'
The voice ceased; but no sound of applause, no murmur of popular tumult
was heard in answer. Then, after an interval, it was once more faintly
audible as the messenger passed on and repeated the decree in another
street; and then the silence again sank down over all things more
awfully pervading than before.
Every word of the proclamation, when repeated in the distance as when
spoken under his window, had clearly reached Numerian's ears. His mind,
already sinking in despair, was riveted on what he had heard from the
woe-boding voice of the herald, with a fascination as absorbing as that
which rivets the eye of the traveller, already giddy on the summit of a
precipice, upon the spectacle of the yawning gulfs beneath. When all
sound of the proclamation had finally died away, the unhappy father
dropped the empty bowl which he had hitherto mechanically continued to
hold before him, and glancing affrightedly at his daughter, groaned to
himself: 'The corpses are to be cast over the walls--the dead are to be
flung forth to the winds of heaven--there is no help for us in the city.
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