CHAPTER 23. THE LAST EFFORTS OF THE BESIEGED.
We return to the street before the palace. The calamities of the siege
had fallen fiercely on those who lay there during the night. From the
turbulent and ferocious mob of a few hours since, not even the sound of
a voice was now heard. Some, surprised in a paroxysm of hunger by
exhaustion and insensibility, lay with their hands half forced into
their mouths, as if in their ravenous madness they had endeavoured to
prey upon their own flesh. Others now and then wearily opened their
languid eyes upon the street, no longer regardful, in the present
extremity of their sufferings, of the building whose destruction they
had assembled to behold, but watching for a fancied realisation of the
visions of richly spread tables and speedy relief called up before them,
as if in mockery, by the delirium of starvation and disease.
The sun had as yet but slightly risen above the horizon, when the
attention of the few among the populace who still preserved some
perception of outward events was suddenly attracted by the appearance of
an irregular procession--composed partly of citizens and partly of
officers of the Senate, and headed by two men--which slowly approached
from the end of the street leading into the interior of the city.
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