There were some among those who gathered round him whose features he
would have recognised at another time as the features of the surviving
adherents of his former congregation. The assembly he had met was
composed of the few sincere Christians in Rome, who had collected, on
the promulgation of the news that Alaric had ratified terms of peace, to
make a pilgrimage through the city, in the hopeless endeavour, by
reading from the Bible and passing exhortation, to awaken the reckless
populace to a feeling of contrition for their sins, and of devout
gratitude for their approaching deliverance from the horrors of the
siege.
But now, when Numerian confronted them, neither by word nor look did he
express the slightest recognition of any who surrounded him. To all the
questions addressed to him, he replied by hurried gestures that none
could comprehend. To all the promises of help and protection heaped
upon him in the first outbreak of the grief and pity of his adherents of
other days, he answered but by the same dull, vacant glance.
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