gate senator from the being of his former
admiration; but still there remained in her despairing eyes enough of
the old look of gentleness and patience, surviving through all anguish
and dread, to connect her, even as she was now, with what she had been.
She stood in the chamber of debauchery and suicide between the funeral
pile and the desperate man who was vowed to fire it, a feeble, helpless
creature, yet powerful in the influence of her presence, at such a
moment and in such a form, as a saving and reproving spirit, armed with
the omnipotence of Heaven to mould the purposes of man.

Awed and astounded, as if he beheld an apparition from the tomb,
Vetranio looked upon this young girl--whom he had loved with the least
selfish passion that ever inspired him; whom he had lamented as long
since lost and dead with the sincerest grief he had ever felt; whom he
now saw standing before him at the very moment ere he doomed himself to
death, altered, desolate, supplicating--with emotions which held him
speechless in wonder, and even in dread. While he still gazed upon her
in silence, he heard her speaking to him in low, melancholy, imploring
accents, which fell upon his ear, after the voices of terror and
desperation that had risen around him throughout the night, like tones
never addressed to it before.

'Numerian, my father, is sinking under the famine,' she began; 'if no
help is given to him, he may die even before sunrise! You are rich and
powerful; I have come to you, having nothing now but his life to live
for, to beg sustenance for him!' She paused, overpowered for the
moment, and bent her eyes wistfully on the senator's face. Then seeing
that he vainly endeavoured to answer her, her head drooped upon her
breast, and her voice sank lower as she continued:--

'I have striven for patience under much sorrow and pain through the
long night that is past; my eyes were heavy and my spirit was faint; I
could have rendered up my soul willingly in my loneliness and
feebleness to God who gave it, but that it was my duty to struggle for
my life and my father's, now that I was restored to him after I had
lost all beside! I could not think, or move, or weep, as, looking
forth upon your palace, I watched and waited through the hours of
darkness. But, as morning dawned, the heaviness at my heart was
lightened; I remembered that the palace I saw before me was yours; and,
though the gates were closed, I knew that I could reach it