United States or Yemen ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
After a protracted examination of Hermanric's countenance and attire, the man, with an imperious expression, strangely at variance with his faltering voice, thus addressed him: 'You are a Goth? 'I am, rejoined the young chief; 'and you are 'A friend of the Goths, was the quick answer. An instant of silence followed. The dialogue was then again begun by the stranger.
Think of such enjoyments as these, and then think that Roman swords have deprived you of them all! Her voice trembled, she ceased for a moment, and looked mournfully up into Hermanric's averted face. Every feature in the young chieftain's countenance expressed the tumult that her words had aroused within him. He attempted to reply, but his voice was powerless in that trying moment.
Yet one moment more she endeavoured to advance, to speak, to snatch the hunting knife from Hermanric's hand; the next she fell insensible at his feet.
You will be happier here, even in this lonely place, than in the former home that you have lost through your father's wrath! 'Oh! I will willingly remain I will joyfully await you! cried the girl, raising her beaming eyes to Hermanric's face. 'I will never speak mournfully to you again; I will never remind you more of all that I have suffered, and all that I have lost!
Sometimes the light played on the white folds of Antonina's dress; sometimes over the bright surface of Hermanric's cuirass, which he had removed and laid by his side on the ground; sometimes over his sword, and his hands, as they rested on it; but it was not sufficiently powerful or lasting to illuminate the room, the walls and corners of which it left in almost complete darkness.
'What says the chorus of the song? 'Money and wine Make beauty mine! I have more of both than any of you. She will come to my tent! During the delivery of these clumsy jests, which followed one upon another with instantaneous rapidity, the scorn at first expressed in Hermanric's countenance became gradually replaced by a look of irrepressible anger.
With Hermanric's corpse beneath her, with the blood-sprinkled room behind her, with a hostile army and a famine-wasted city beyond her, it was only through that flood of tears, that healing passion of gentle emotions, that she rose superior to the multiplied horrors of her situation at the very moment when her faculties and her life seemed sinking under them alike.
'I have learned many odes of many poets, said she, quickly and confusedly avoiding the mention of Vetranio, which a direct answer to Hermanric's question must have produced, 'but I remember none perfectly, save those whose theme is of spirits and of other worlds, and of the invisible beauty that we think of but cannot see.
They had probably expected to be regaled by the ludicrous terror of some Roman slave whom their comrade had discovered lurking in the empty suburbs; for when they entered the tent, and saw nothing but the shrinking figure of the unhappy girl, as she crouched on the earth at Hermanric's feet, they all paused with one accord, and looked round on each other in speechless astonishment.
The trees, the flower-beds, and the patches of grass, all remained in their former positions nothing had been added or taken away since the melancholy days that were past; but a change was visible in Hermanric's grave. The turf above it had been renewed, and a border of small evergreen shrubs was planted over the track which Goisvintha's footsteps had traced.
Word Of The Day