ished, the madman rioted
afresh in his fury; and journeyed as his visions led him, round and
round his temple sanctuary, and hither and thither, when the night was
dark and death was busiest in Rome, among the expiring in deserted
houses, and the lifeless in the silent streets.

But there were other later events in his existence that never revived
within him. The old familiar image of the idol Serapis, which had
drawn him into the temple when he re-entered Rome, absorbed in itself
and in its associated remembrances all that remained active of his
paralysed faculties. His betrayal of his trust in the house of
Numerian, his passage through the rifted wall, his crushing repulse in
the tent of Alaric, never for a moment occupied his wandering thoughts.
The clouds that hung over his mind might open to him parting glimpses
of the toils and triumphs of his early career; but they descended in
impenetrable darkness on all the after-days of his dreary life.

Such was the being to whose will, by a mysterious fatality, the father
and child were now submitted; such the existence--solitary, hopeless,
loathsome--of their stern and wily betrayer of other days!

Since he had ceased speaking, the cold, death-like grasp of his hand
had gradually strengthened, and he had begun to look slowly and
inquiringly round him from side to side. Had this change marked the
approaching return of his raving paroxysm, the lives of Numerian and
Antonina would have been sacrificed the next moment; but all that it
now denoted was the quickening of the lofty and obscure ideas of
celebrity and success, of priestly honour and influence, of the
splendour and glory of the gods, which had prompted his last words.

He moved suddenly, and drew the victims of his dangerous caprice a few
steps farther into the interior of the temple; then led them close up
to the lofty pile of objects which had first attracted Numerian's eyes
on entering the building. 'Kneel and adore!' cried the madman
fiercely, replacing his hands on their shoulders and pressing them to
the ground--'You stand before the gods, in the presence of their high
priest!'

The girl's head sank forward, and she hid her face in her hands; but
her father looked up tremblingly at the pile. His eyes had insensibly
become more accustomed to the dim light of the temple, and he now saw
more distinctly the objects composing the mass that rose above him.

Hundreds of images of the gods, in gold, silver