saddles and other spoils erected, and declared his determination to
burn himself alive rather than be taken captive. He led back his
shattered host to Pannonia, and there in his wooden palace meditated
revenge. In the one authentic glimpse which we get of his mode of
life, we see him at a banquet, while his nobles and warriors caroused
and burst into peals of laughter at the buffooneries of an idiot and a
jester. But the Hunnish king sat grave and silent, caressing the
cheeks of the boy Ernak, his favorite son, whom the augur pointed out
as the heir of his destinies.

In 452 he once more put his myriads in motion and invaded Italy. Every
where the land was as the garden of Eden before him; behind him it
was a desolate wilderness. Encouraged by the omen of some storks
leaving their nest, he stormed and destroyed Aquileia, and, razing
city after city into heaps of blackened ruins, advanced to Milan,
boasting that "where his horses' hoofs trod the grass never grew."
Rome awaited with trembling a fate which seemed to threaten
unprecedented catastrophe. But in this awful crisis the Pope, Leo I.,
showed himself the true _Defensor civitatis_. He headed a splendid
embassy to the camp of Attila. Already Leo had helped to trace with
firm hand the deep lines of Christian orthodoxy which were accepted by
the Church at the fourth great OEcumenical Council of Chalcedon in 451
as her final utterance as to the true Godhead, the perfect Manhood,
the invisible yet distinct union of both Godhead and Manhood, in the
person of her Lord. Now Leo showed what miracle could be achieved by
the irresistible might of weakness. Attila's god was a naked iron
sword of gigantic size, which had been accidentally found by a
herdsman and presented to him, but which he palmed off on his nation
as the authentic sword of the Scythian war-god. Yet he was easily
overawed by the majesty of religion. He scorned the guilty, corrupt
courtiers of Constantinople, but he almost trembled before a holy man.
Already in 451 he had spared the defenceless city of Troyes at the
entreaty of its bishop, St. Lupus, and had asked the benefit of his
prayers. And when he gazed on the calm countenance, noble presence,
and dauntless demeanor of Pope Leo, an awful dread fell upon him.
Alaric had conquered Rome, but Alaric had died immediately afterward.
How if it would be so with Attila? He yielded, he retired; he said--or
perhaps he said--that he could conquer _men_, but that th