lowered the delicate plants that the hand of Antonina had raised
to please his eye. Near him stood the dwelling, sacred to the first
and last kiss that he had impressed upon her lips; and about him, on
all sides, rose the plains and woodlands that had engrossed, with her
image, the devotion of all her dearest thoughts. He lay, in his death,
in the midst of the magic circle of the best joys of his life! It was
a fitter burial-place for the earthly relics of that bright and
generous spirit than the pit in the carnage-laden battle-field, or the
desolate sepulchres of a northern land!

CHAPTER 19.

THE GUARDIAN RESTORED.

Not long is the new-made grave left unwatched to the solemn
guardianship of Solitude and Night. More than a few minutes have
scarcely elapsed since it was dug, yet already human footsteps press
its yielding surface, and a human glance scans attentively its small
and homely mound.

But it is not Antonina, whom he loved; it is not Goisvintha, through
whose vengeance he was lost, who now looks upon the earth above the
young warrior's corpse. It is a stranger, an outcast; a man lost,
dishonoured, abandoned--it is the solitary and ruined Ulpius who now
gazes with indifferent eyes upon the peaceful garden and the eloquent
grave.

In the destinies of woe committed to the keeping of the night, the
pagan had been fatally included. The destruction that had gone forth
against the body of the young man who lay beneath the earth had
overtaken the mind of the old man who stood over his simple grave. The
frame of Ulpius, with all its infirmities, was still there, but the
soul of ferocious patience and unconquerable daring that had lighted it
grandly in its ruin was gone. Over the long anguish of that woeful
life the veil of self-oblivion had closed for ever!

He had been dismissed by Alaric, but he had not returned to the city
whither he was bidden. Throughout the night he had wandered about the
lonely suburbs, striving in secret and horrible suffering for the
mastery of his mind. There did the overthrow of all his hopes from the
Goths expand rapidly into the overthrow of the whole intellect that had
created his aspirations. There had reason burst the bonds that had so
long chained, perverted, degraded it! At length, wandering hither and
thither, he had dragged the helpless body, possessed no longer by the
perilous mind, to the farm-house garden in which he now stood, gazing
alternately at the upt