'O that this weary war would end!' exclaimed the elder lady in the
language of the Goths. 'I am sick of wandering, sick of this south,
where winter is the same as summer, sick of the name of Rome. I
would I were back in Mediolanum. There, when you look from the
walls, you see the great white mountains, and a wind blows from
them, cold, keen; a wind that sets you running and leaping, and
makes you hungry. Here I have no gust for food, and indeed there is
none worth eating.'
As she spoke, she raised her hand to the branch of an arbutus just
above her head, plucked one of the strawberry-like fruits, bit into
it with her white teeth, and threw the half away contemptuously.
'You!' She turned to her companion abruptly. 'Where would you like
to live when the war is over?'
Veranilda's eyes rested upon something in the far distance, but less
far than the shining horizon.
'Surely not _there_!' pursued the other, watching her. 'I was but
once in Rome, and I had not been there a week when I fell sick of
fever. King Theodoric knew better than to make his dwelling at Rome,
and Totila will never live there.
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