Gradually she turned her face towards Rome: she was realising a daring
purpose, a fatal resolution, long cherished during the days and nights
of her solitary wanderings. 'The ranks of the embassy,' she muttered,
in a deep, thoughtful tone, 'are thickly filled. Where there are many
there must be confusion and haste; they march together, and know not
their own numbers; they mark not one more or one less among them.'
She stopped. Strange and dark changes of colour and expression passed
over her ghastly features. She drew from her bosom the bloody helmet-
crest of her husband, which had never quitted her since the day of his
death; her face grew livid under an awful expression of rage, ferocity,
and despair, as she gazed on it. Suddenly she looked up at the city--
fierce and defiant, as if the great walls before her were mortal enemies
against whom she stood at bay in the death-struggle.
'The widowed and the childless shall drink of thy blood!' she cried,
stretching out her skinny hand towards Rome, 'though the armies of her
nation barter their wrongs with thy people for bags of silver and gold!
I have pondered on it in my solitude, and dreamed of it in my dreams! I
have sworn that I would enter Rome, and avenge my slaughtered kindred,
alone among thousands! Now, now, I will hold to my oath! Thou blood-
stained city of the coward and the traitor, the enemy of the
defenceless, and the murderer of the weak! thou who didst send forth to
Aquileia the slayers of my husband and the assassins of my children, I
wait no longer before thy walls! This day will I mingle, daring all
things, with thy returning citizens and penetrate, amid Romans, the
gates of Rome! Through the day will I lurk, cunning and watchful, in
thy solitary haunts, to steal forth on thee at nights, a secret minister
of death! I will watch for thy young and thy weak once in unguarded
places; I will prey, alone in the thick darkness, upon thy unprotected
lives; I will destroy thy children, as their fathers destroyed at
Aquileia the children of the Goths! Thy rabble will discover me and
arise against me; they will tear me in pieces and trample my mangled
body on the pavement of the streets; but it will be after I have seen
the blood that I have sworn to shed flowing under my knife! My
vengeance will be complete, and torments and death will be to me as
guests that I welcome, and as deliverers whom I await!'
Again she paused--the wild triumph of the fanatic on the burning pile
was flashing in her face--suddenly her eyes fell once more upon the
stained helmet-crest; then her expression changed again to despair, and
her voice grew low and moaning, when she thus resumed:--
'I am weary of my life; when the vengeance is done I shall be delivered
from this prison of the earth--in the world of shadows I shall see my
husband, and my little ones will gather round my knees again.
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