l power of enforcing order
had long since been lost; the few soldiers gathered about the senators
made one abortive effort to drive the people back, and then resigned
any further resistance to their will.

Feebly and silently the spirit-broken assembly now moved along the
great highways, so often trodden, to the roar of martial music and the
shouts of applauding multitudes, by the triumphal processions of
victorious Rome; and from every street, as it passed on, the wasted
forms of the people stole out like spectres to join it.

Among these, as the embassy approached the Pincian Gate, were two,
hurrying forth to herd with their fellow-sufferers, on whose fortunes
in the fallen city our more particular attention has been fixed. To
explain their presence on the scene (if such an explanation be
required) it is necessary to digress for a moment from the progress of
events during the last days of the siege to the morning when Antonina
departed from Vetranio's palace to return with her succour of food and
wine to her father's house.

The reader is already acquainted, from her own short and simple
narrative, with the history of the closing hours of her mournful night
vigil by the side of her sinking parent, and with the motives which
prompted her to seek the palace of the senator, and entreat assistance
in despair from one whom she only remembered as the profligate
destroyer of her tranquility under her father's roof. It is now,
therefore, most fitting to follow her on her way back through the
palace gardens. No living creature but herself trod the grassy paths,
along which she hastened with faltering steps--those paths which she
dimly remembered to have first explored when in former days she
ventured forth to follow the distant sounds of Vetranio's lute.

In spite of her vague, heavy sensations of solitude and grief, this
recollection remained painfully present to her mind, unaccountably
mingled with the dark and dreary apprehension which filled her heart as
she hurried onward, until she once more entered her father's dwelling;
and then, as she again approached his couch, every other feeling became
absorbed in a faint, overpowering fear, lest, after all her
perseverance and success in her errand of filial devotion, she might
have returned too late.

The old man still lived--his weary eyes opened gladly on her, when she
aroused him to partake of the treasured gifts from the senator's
banqueting table. The wretched fo