ght of the sun!" interrupted Totila
eagerly. "Do I find this harsh thought in you too? Look around you!
When, tell me, when has Italy ever flourished more than under our
protection? Scarcely in the time of Augustus! You teach us science and
art; we give you peace and protection. Can one imagine a finer
correlation? Harmony amongst Romans and Goths may create an entirely
new era, more splendid than has ever existed."

"Harmony! But it does not exist. You are to us a strange people,
divided from us by speech and faith, by race and customs, and by
centuries of hatred. Once we robbed you of your freedom; now you have
robbed us of ours. Between us yawns a wide abyss."

"You reject my favourite idea."

"It is a dream!"

"No, it is truth. I feel it, and perhaps the time will come when I can
prove it. I would build all the fabric of my life upon it."

"Then were it built upon a noble delusion. No bridge between Romans and
barbarians!"

"Then," said Totila, with some heat, "I do not understand how you can
live--how you could take me----"

"Do not complete your sentence," said Julius gravely. "It was not easy;
it was most painful self-denial. Only after a sharp struggle with
selfish feelings did I succeed. But at last I have ceased to live only
in my nation. The faith which already unites Romans and barbarians as
nothing else could; which more and more powerfully conquered my
repugnant reason by grief and pain--pain which turned to joy--brought
peace to me in the conflict of my soul. In this one thing I may already
boast that I am a Christian; I live for mankind, not alone for my
nation. I am a man, and no longer a mere Roman. Therefore I can love
you, the barbarian, like a brother. Are we not brothers of one
family--that of humanity? Therefore I can bear to live, even after
seeing my nation die. I live for humanity; that is my people."

"No!" cried Totila vehemently; "that I could never do. I can, and will,
live only for my nation. My nationality is the air in which alone my
soul can breathe. Why should we not endure eternally, or as long as
this earth endures? Persians and Greeks? We are of better stuff! Need
we fall because they have decayed? We are still in the strength of our
youth. Ah, no! If the day should ever come when the Goths fall, may I
not live to see it! Oh, ye gods! let us not linger like these sickly
Greeks, who cannot live and cannot die. No; if it must be, send a
fearful tempest, and let us perish sud