e approach of the besiegers. Passing quickly
through the outer halls, she stopped at length in one of the sleeping
apartments; and here she found, among other possessions left behind in
the flight, the store of wearing apparel belonging to the owner of the
room.

From this she selected a Roman robe, upper mantle, and sandals--the
most common in colour and texture that she could find--and folding them
up into the smallest compass, hid them under her own garments. Then,
avoiding all those whom she met on her way, she returned in the
direction of the king's tent; but when she approached it, branched off
stealthily towards Rome, until she reached a ruined building half-way
between the city and the camp. In this concealment she clothed herself
in her disguise, drawing the mantle closely round her head and face;
and from this point--calm, vigilant, determined, her hand on the knife
beneath her robe, her lips muttering the names of her murdered husband
and children--she watched the high-road to the Pincian Gate.

There for a short time let us leave her, and enter the tent of Alaric,
while the Senate yet plead before the Arbiter of the Empire for mercy
and peace.

At the moment of which we write, the embassy had already exhausted its
powers of intercession, apparently without moving the leader of the
Goths from his first pitiless resolution of fixing the ransom of Rome
at the price of every possession of value which the city contained.
There was a momentary silence now in the great tent. At one extremity
of it, congregated in a close and irregular group, stood the wearied
and broken-spirited members of the Senate, supported by such of their
attendants as had been permitted to follow them; at the other appeared
the stately forms of Alaric and the warriors who surrounded him as his
council of war. The vacant space in the middle of the tent was strewn
with martial weapons, separating the representatives of the two nations
one from the other; and thus accidentally, yet palpably, typifying the
fierce hostility which had sundered in years past, and was still to
sunder for years to come, the people of the North and the people of the
South.

The Gothic king stood a little in advance of his warriors, leaning on
his huge, heavy sword. His steady eye wandered from man to man among
the broken-spirited senators, contemplating, with cold and cruel
penetration, all that suffering and despair had altered for the worse
in their outwa