aring from him, in
his madness, revelations of his early life which had never passed his
lips during his days of treacherous servitude in the house on the
Pincian Hill, that thus filled Numerian's inmost soul with awe, and
struck his limbs motionless. There was more in all that he heard than
this. The words seemed as words that had doomed him at once and for
ever. His eyes, directed full on the face of the madman, were dilated
with horror, and his deep, gasping, convulsive breathings mingled
heavily, during the moment of silence that ensued, with the chiming of
the bells above and the bubbling of the water below--the lulling music
of the temple, playing its happy evening hymn at the pleasant close of
day.

'We shall remember, mother!--we shall remember!' continued the Pagan
softly, 'and be happy in our remembrances! My brother, who loves me
not, will love you when I am gone! You will walk in my little garden,
and think on me as you look at the flowers that we have planted and
watered together in the evening hours, when the sky was glorious to
behold, and the earth was all quiet around us! Listen, mother, and kiss
me! When I go to the far country, I will make a garden there like my
garden here, and plant the same flowers that we have planted here, and
in the evening I will go out and give them water at the hour when you
go out to give my flowers water at home; and so, though we see each
other no more, it will yet be as if we laboured together in the garden
as we labour now!'

The girl still fixed her eager gaze on her father. His eyes presented
the same rigid expression of horror; but he was now wiping off with his
own hand, mechanically, as if he knew it not, the foam which the
paroxysms had left round the madman's lips, and, amid the groans that
burst from him, she could hear such words as, 'Lord God!--mercy, Lord
God! Thou, who hast thus restored him to me--thus, worse than
dead!--mercy! mercy!'

The light on the pavement beneath the portico of the temple was fading
visibly--the sun had gone down.

For the third time the madman spoke, but his tones were losing their
softness; they were complaining, plaintive, unutterably mournful; his
dreams of the past were already changing. 'Farewell, brother--farewell
for years and years!' he cried. 'You have not given me the love that I
gave you. The fault was not mine that our father loved me the best,
and chose me to be sent to the temple to be a priest at the