Time flowed on--the monotonous hours of the day waned again towards
night; and plague and famine told their lapse in the fated highways of
Rome. For father and child the sand in the glass was fast running out,
and neither marked it as it diminished. The sleeper still reposed, and
the guardian by his side still watched; but now her weary gaze was
directed on the street, unconsciously attracted by the sound of voices
which at length rose from it at intervals, and by the light of the
torches and lamps which appeared in the great palace of the senator
Vetranio, as the sun gradually declined in the horizon, and the fiery
clouds around were quenched in the vapours of the advancing night.
Steadily she looked upon the sight beneath and before her; but even yet
her limbs never moved; no expression relieved the blank, solemn
peacefulness of her features.
Meanwhile, the soft, brief twilight glimmered over the earth, and showed
the cold moon, poised solitary in the starless heaven; then, the
stealthy darkness arose at her pale signal, and closed slowly round the
City of Death!
CHAPTER 22.
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