mage and
melodious note, and followed by children and young girls vainly and
piteously entreating that their favourites may be restored.

This strange procession pauses, at length, before a mighty caldron
slung over a great fire in the middle of the square, round which stand
the city butchers with bare knives, and the trustiest men of the Roman
legions with threatening weapons. A proclamation is then repeated,
commanding the populace who have no money left to purchase food, to
bring up their domestic animals to be boiled together over the public
furnace, for the sake of contributing to the public support.

The next minute, in pursuance of this edict, the dumb favourites of the
crowd passed from the owner's caressing hand into the butcher's ready
grasp. The faint cries of the animals, starved like their masters,
mingled for a few moments with the sobs and lamentations of the women
and children, to whom the greater part of them belonged. For, in this
the first stage of their calamities, that severity of hunger which
extinguishes pity and estranges grief was unknown to the populace; and
though fast losing spirit, they had not yet sunk to the depths of
ferocious despair which even now were invisibly opening between them.
A thousand pangs were felt, a thousand humble tragedies were acted, in
the brief moments of separation between guardian and charge. The child
snatched its last kiss of the bird that had sung over its bed; the dog
looked its last entreaty for protection from the mistress who had once
never met it without a caress. Then came the short interval of agony
and death, then the steam rose fiercely from the greedy caldron, and
then the people for a time dispersed; the sorrowful to linger near the
confines of the fire, and the hungry to calm their impatience by a
visit to the neighbouring church.

The marble aisles of the noble basilica held a gloomy congregation.
Three small candles were alone lighted on the high altar. No sweet
voices sang melodious anthems or exulting hymns. The monks, in hoarse
tones and monotonous harmonics, chanted the penitential psalms. Here
and there knelt a figure clothed in mourning robes, and absorbed in
secret prayer; but over the majority of the assembly either blank
despondency or sullen inattention universally prevailed.

As the last dull notes of the last psalm died away among the lofty
recesses of the church, a procession of pious Christians appeared at
the door and advan