ion of the result of the embassy
would be given from this place; and in the eagerness of their anxiety
to hear it, in the painful intensity of their final hopes of
deliverance, even death itself seemed for a while to be arrested in its
fatal progress through the ranks of the besieged.

In silence and apprehension they counted the tardy moments of delay,
and watched with sickening gaze the shadows lessening and lessening, as
the sun gradually rose in the heavens to the meridian point.

At length, after an absence that appeared of endless duration, the two
ambassadors re-entered Rome. Neither of them spoke as they hurriedly
passed through the ranks of the people; but their looks of terror and
despair were all-eloquent to every beholder--their mission had failed.

For some time no member of the government appeared to have resolution
enough to come forward and harangue the people on the subject of the
unsuccessful embassy. After a long interval, however, the Prefect
Pompeianus himself, urged partly by the selfish entreaties of his
friends, and partly by the childish love of display which still adhered
to him through all his present anxieties and apprehensions, stepped
into one of the lower balconies of the Senate-house to address the
citizens beneath him.

The chief magistrate of Rome was no longer the pompous and portly
personage whose intrusion on Vetranio's privacy during the commencement
of the siege has been described previously. The little superfluous
flesh still remaining on his face hung about it like an ill-fitting
garment; his tones had become lachrymose; the oratorical gestures, with
which he was wont to embellish profusely his former speeches, were all
abandoned; nothing remained of the original man but the bombast of his
language and the impudent complacency of his self-applause, which now
appeared in contemptible contrast to his crestfallen demeanour and his
disheartening narrative of degradation and defeat.

'Men of Rome, let each of you exercise in his own person the heroic
virtues of a Regulus or a Cato!' the prefect began. 'A treaty with the
barbarians is out of our power. It is the scourge of the empire,
Alaric himself, who commands the invading forces! Vain were the
dignified remonstrances of the grave Basilius, futile was the
persuasive rhetoric of the astute Johannes, addressed to the
slaughtering and vainglorious Goth! On their admission to his
presence, the ambassadors, anxious to awe him