the congregation,
gazing long and wistfully over the faces that met his view. Now that
the sermon is ended, and the last lingerer has quitted the church, he
turns from the spot whence he has anxiously watched the different
members of the departing throng, and feebly crouches down on his knees
at the base of a pillar that is near him. His eyes are hollow, and his
cheeks are wan; his thin grey hairs are few and fading on his aged
head. He makes no effort to follow the crowd and partake their
sustenance; no one is left behind to urge, no one returns to lead him
to the public meal. Though weak and old, he is perfectly forsaken in
his loneliness, perfectly unsolaced in his grief; his friends have lost
all trace of him; his enemies have ceased to fear or to hate him now.
As he crouches by the pillar alone, he covers his forehead with his
pale, palsied hands, his dim eyes fill with bitter tears, and such
expressions as these are ever and anon faintly audible in the intervals
of his heavy sighs: 'Day after day! Day after day! And my lost one
is not found! my loved and wronged one is not restored! Antonina!
Antonina!'

Some days after the public distribution of food in the square of St.
John Lateran, Vetranio's favourite freedman might have been observed
pursuing his way homeward, sadly and slowly, to his master's palace.

It was not without cause that the pace of the intelligent Carrio was
funereal and his expression disconsolate. Even during the short period
that had elapsed since the scene in the basilica already described, the
condition of the city had altered fearfully for the worse. The famine
advanced with giant strides; every succeeding hour endued it with new
vigour, every effort to repel it served but to increase its spreading
and overwhelming influence. One after another the pleasures and
pursuits of the city declined beneath the dismal oppression of the
universal ill, until the public spirit in Rome became moved alike in
all classes by one gloomy inspiration--a despairing defiance of the
famine and the Goths.

The freedman entered his master's palace neither saluted nor welcomed
by the once obsequious slaves in the outer lodge. Neither harps nor
singing-boys, neither woman's ringing laughter nor man's bacchanalian
glee, now woke the echoes in the lonely halls. The pulse of pleasure
seemed to have throbbed its last in the joyless being of Vetranio's
altered household.

Hastening his steps as he entere