atisfactory pomp, Honoria sighed, yielded to the impulse of
nature, and threw herself into the arms of her chamberlain Eugenius. Her
guilt and shame (such is the absurd language of imperious man) were soon
betrayed by the appearances of pregnancy; but the disgrace of the royal
family was published to the world by the imprudence of the empress
Placidia who dismissed her daughter, after a strict and shameful
confinement, to a remote exile at Constantinople. The unhappy princess
passed twelve or fourteen years in the irksome society of the sisters of
Theodosius, and their chosen virgins; to whose _crown_ Honoria could
no longer aspire, and whose monastic assiduity of prayer, fasting, and
vigils, she reluctantly imitated. Her impatience of long and hopeless
celibacy urged her to embrace a strange and desperate resolution. The
name of Attila was familiar and formidable at Constantinople; and his
frequent embassies entertained a perpetual intercourse between his camp
and the Imperial palace. In the pursuit of love, or rather of revenge,
the daughter of Placidia sacrificed every duty and every prejudice; and
offered to deliver her person into the arms of a Barbarian, of whose
language she was ignorant, whose figure was scarcely human, and whose
religion and manners she abhorred. By the ministry of a faithful eunuch,
she transmitted to Attila a ring, the pledge of her affection; and
earnestly conjured him to claim her as a lawful spouse, to whom he had
been secretly betrothed. These indecent advances were received, however,
with coldness and disdain; and the king of the Huns continued to
multiply the number of his wives, till his love was awakened by the
more forcible passions of ambition and avarice. The invasion of Gaul
was preceded, and justified, by a formal demand of the princess Honoria,
with a just and equal share of the Imperial patrimony. His predecessors,
the ancient Tanjous, had often addressed, in the same hostile and
peremptory manner, the daughters of China; and the pretensions of Attila
were not less offensive to the majesty of Rome. A firm, but temperate,
refusal was communicated to his ambassadors. The right of female
succession, though it might derive a specious argument from the recent
examples of Placidia and Pulcheria, was strenuously denied; and the
indissoluble engagements of Honoria were opposed to the claims of her
Scythian lover. On the discovery of her connection with the king of the
Huns, the guilty pr