in their
awe! He remained erect and motionless at his post. That hour itself
had not animated the machine of the ruthless majesty of Rome into the
reasoning and self-acting man. There he stood, amidst the crashing
elements: he had not received the permission to desert his station and
escape.

Diomed and his companion hurried on, when suddenly a female form rushed
athwart their way. It was the girl whose ominous voice had been raised
so often and so gladly in anticipation of 'the merry show'.

'Oh, Diomed!' she cried, 'shelter! shelter! See'--pointing to an infant
clasped to her breast--'see this little one!--it is mine!--the child of
shame! I have never owned it till this hour. But now I remember I am a
mother! I have plucked it from the cradle of its nurse: she had fled!
Who could think of the babe in such an hour, but she who bore it? Save
it! save it!'

'Curses on thy shrill voice! Away, harlot!' muttered Clodius between
his ground teeth.

'Nay, girl,' said the more humane Diomed; 'follow if thou wilt. This
way--this way--to the vaults!'

They hurried on--they arrived at the house of Diomed--they laughed aloud
as they crossed the threshold, for they deemed the danger over.

Diomed ordered his slaves to carry down into the subterranean gallery,
before described, a profusion of food and oil for lights; and there
Julia, Clodius, the mother and her babe, the greater part of the slaves,
and some frightened visitors and clients of the neighborhood, sought
their shelter.

Chapter VII

THE PROGRESS OF THE DESTRUCTION.

THE cloud, which had scattered so deep a murkiness over the day, had now
settled into a solid and impenetrable mass. It resembled less even the
thickest gloom of a night in the open air than the close and blind
darkness of some narrow room. But in proportion as the blackness
gathered, did the lightnings around Vesuvius increase in their vivid and
scorching glare. Nor was their horrible beauty confined to the usual
hues of fire; no rainbow ever rivalled their varying and prodigal dyes.
Now brightly blue as the most azure depth of a southern sky--now of a
livid and snakelike green, darting restlessly to and fro as the folds of
an enormous serpent--now of a lurid and intolerable crimson, gushing
forth through the columns of smoke, far and wide, and lighting up the
whole city from arch to arch--then suddenly dying into a sickly
paleness, like the ghost of their own life!

In the pau