out of the cup; the blood flows over the altar! Up! up! tear forth with
reeking hands the heart while it is yet warm, futurity is before you in
the quivering entrails, look on them and read! read!'

While he spoke, Goisvintha had entered the temple. The street was
still desolate; no help was at hand.

Not advancing at once, she concealed herself near the door behind a
projection in the pile of idols, watching from it until Ulpius, in the
progress of his frenzy, should turn away from Antonina, whom he stood
fronting at this instant. But she had not entered unperceived;
Antonina had seen her again. And now the bitterness of death, when the
young die unprotected in their youth, came over the girl, and she cried
in a low wailing voice, as she knelt by Numerian's side: 'I must die,
father, I must die, as Hermanric died! Look up at me, and speak to me
before I die!'

Her father was still praying; he heard nothing, for his heart was
bleeding in atonement at the shrine of his boyish home, and his soul
still communed with its Maker. The voice that followed hers was the
voice of Ulpius.

'Oh, beautiful are the gardens round the sacred altars, and lofty the
trees that embower the glittering shrines!' he exclaimed, rapt and
ecstatic in his new visions. 'Lo, the morning breaks, and the spirits
of light are welcomed by a sacrifice! The sun goes down behind the
mountain, and the beams of evening tremble on the victim beneath the
knife of the adoring priest! The moon and stars shine high in the
firmament, and the Genii of Nights are saluted in the still hours with
blood!'

As he paused, the lament of Antonina was continued in lower and lower
tones: 'I must die, father, I must die!' And with it murmured the
supplicating accents of Numerian: 'God of Mercy! deliver the helpless
and forgive the afflicted! Lord of Judgment! deal gently with Thy
servants who have sinned!' While, mingling with both in discordant
combination, the strange music of the temple still poured on its
lulling sound--the rippling of the running waters and the airy chiming
of the bells!

'Worship!--emperors, armies, nations, glorify and worship me!' shouted
the madman, in thunder-tones of triumph and command, as his eye for the
first time encountered the figure of Numerian prostrate at his feet.
'Worship the demi-god who moves with the deities through spheres
unknown to man! I have heard the moans of the unburied who wander on
the shores of the