Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 26, 2025
Some minutes have elapsed since we left the father and daughter standing by the Pagan's side before the mouth of the vault; and as yet there appears no change in the several positions of the three. But already, while Ulpius still looks down steadfastly into the cavity at his feet, his voice, as he continues to speak, grows louder, and his words become more distinct.
With a firm decisive hand he would take the new page, and turn it over. That last page, on which his wife's name was written large, was completely done with, closed. The old joyous spirit, the keen eagerness for love and joy and life, the Pagan's gay rejoicing in it, that had been such a marked feature of his disposition before his marriage, came back to him, rushed through him, refilled him.
With the termination of his passage through the breach in the wall had ended every recollection associated with it in the Pagan's shattered memory. A new blank now pervaded his lost faculties, desolate as that which had overwhelmed them in the night when he first stood in the farm-house garden by the young chieftain's grave.
He might have spoken more, but his voice was drowned in one long shriek of agony which burst from Numerian's lips, and echoed discordantly through the hall of the temple, and he sank down with his face to the ground at the Pagan's feet. The dark and terrible destiny was fulfilled.
Such thoughts as these passed through the Pagan's toiling mind as, unobservant of all outward events, he paced through the streets of the beleaguered city. Already he beheld the array of the Goths preparing the way, as the unconscious pioneers of the returning gods, for the march of that mighty revolution which he was determined to lead.
Soon I proposed a social smoke; and, producing his pouch and tomahawk, he quietly offered me a puff. And then we sat exchanging puffs from that wild pipe of his, and keeping it regularly passing between us. If there yet lurked any ice of indifference towards me in the Pagan's breast, this pleasant, genial smoke we had, soon thawed it out, and left us cronies.
The portraits, of more historical than artistic interest, had gone; and tapestry, full of the blue and bronze of peacocks, fell over the doors, and shut out all history and activity untouched with beauty and peace; and now when I looked at my Crevelli and pondered on the rose in the hand of the Virgin, wherein the form was so delicate and precise that it seemed more like a thought than a flower, or at the grey dawn and rapturous faces of my Francesca, I knew all a Christian's ecstasy without his slavery to rule and custom; when I pondered over the antique bronze gods and goddesses, which I had mortgaged my house to buy, I had all a pagan's delight in various beauty and without his terror at sleepless destiny and his labour with many sacrifices; and I had only to go to my bookshelf, where every book was bound in leather, stamped with intricate ornament, and of a carefully chosen colour: Shakespeare in the orange of the glory of the world, Dante in the dull red of his anger, Milton in the blue grey of his formal calm; and I could experience what I would of human passions without their bitterness and without satiety.
His wife and children were very hungry, rabbits and fish this winter being so scarce that several of the Indians are obliged to abandon their usual hunting grounds. 'Kebuk, for this is the pagan's name, was very glad to see us, a large fire was quickly made, snow melted, pork fried, and soon the Missionary, guide, and pagan were enjoying a hearty meal.
This was that he should be given the "crimson shroud" and sea-tomb of his war-like ancestors, for the idea that his body might be touched by strange hands, shut in a close coffin, and laid in the earth to moulder away to wormy corruption, had been the one fantastic dread of the sturdy old pagan's life.
They searched and found the piece of armor, with the initials of the Christian and surname which had belonged to the philosopher in his life as a soldier, centuries before. This puzzled me, for you see now don't laugh something had formerly happened to me very much like the Pagan's experience. I don't care much for books, and from a child have always read the same one.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking