nter; where the soldier of the
city guard dropped down overpowered ere he reached the limit of his
rounds; where the wealthy merchant lay pestilence-stricken upon the
last hoards of repulsive food which his gold had procured; the assassin
and the robber might be seen--now greedily devouring the offal that lay
around them, now falling dead upon the bodies which they had rifled but
the moment before.

Over the whole prospect, far and near, wherever it might extend,
whatever the horrors by which it might be occupied, was spread a blank,
supernatural stillness. Not a sound arose; the living were as silent
as the dead; crime, suffering, despair, were all voiceless alike; the
trumpet was unheard in the guard-house; the bell never rang from the
church; even the thick, misty rain, that now descended from the black
and unmoving clouds, and obscured in cold shadows the outlines of
distant buildings and the pinnacle tops of mighty palaces, fell
noiseless to the ground. The sky had no wind; the earth no echoes--the
pervading desolation appalled the eye; the vast stillness weighed dull
on the ear--it was a scene as of the last-left city of an exhausted
world, decaying noiselessly into primeval chaos.

Through this atmosphere of darkness and death, along these paths of
pestilence and famine; unregarding and unregarded, the Pagan and his
prisoner passed slowly onward towards the quarter of the city opposite
the Pincian Mount. No ray of thought, even yet, brightened the dull
faculties of Ulpius; still he walked forward vacantly, and still he was
followed wearily by the fast-failing girl.

Sunk in her mingled stupor of bodily weakness and mental despair, she
never spoke, never raised her head, never looked forth on the one side
or the other. She had now ceased even to feel the strong, cold grasp
of the Pagan's hand. Shadowy visions of spheres beyond the world,
arrayed in enchanting beauty, and people with happy spirits in their
old earthly forms, where a long deathless existence moved smoothly and
dreamily onward, without mark of time or taint of woe, were opening
before her mind. She lost all memory of afflictions and wrongs, all
apprehension of danger from the madman at whose mercy she remained.
And thus she still moved feebly onward as the will of Ulpius guided
her, with no observation of her present peril, and no anxiety for her
impending fate.

They passed the grand circular structure of the Pantheon, entered the
long