near, a
bitter outrage was preparing for me alone. The men who had hitherto
watched us were changed, and of the number of the new guards was one
who cast on me the eyes of lust. Night after night he poured his
entreaties into my unwilling ear; for, in his vanity and shamelessness,
he believed that I, who was Gothic and the wife of a Goth, might be won
by him whose parentage was but Roman! Soon from prayers he rose to
threats; and one night, appearing before me with smiles, he cried out
that Stilicho, whose desire was to make peace with the Goths, had
suffered, for his devotion to our people, the penalty of death; that a
time of ruin was approaching for us all, and that he alone--whom I
despised--could preserve me from the anger of Rome. As he ceased he
approached me; but I, who had been in many battle-fields, felt no dread
at the prospect of war, and I spurned him with laughter from my
presence.

'Then, for a few nights more, my enemy approached me not again. Until
one evening, as I sat on the terrace before the house, with the child
that you have beheld, a helmet-crest suddenly fell at my feet, and a
voice cried to me from the garden beneath: 'Priulf thy husband has
been slain in a quarrel by the soldiers of Rome! Already the legions
with whom he served are on their way to the town; for a massacre of the
hostages is ordained. Speak but the word, and I can save thee even
yet!'

'I looked on the crest. It was bloody, and it was his! For an instant
my heart writhed within me as I thought on my warrior whom I had loved!
Then, as I heard the messenger of death retire, cursing, from his
lurking-place in the garden, I recollected that now my children had
none but their mother to defend them, and that peril was preparing for
them from the enemies of their race. Besides the little one in my
arms, I had two that were sleeping in the house. As I looked round,
bewildered and in despair, to see if a chance were left us to escape,
there rang through the evening stillness the sound of a trumpet, and
the tramp of armed men was audible in the street beneath. Then, from
all quarters of the town rose, as one sudden sound, the shrieks of
women and the yells of men. Already, as I rushed towards my children's
beds, the fiends of Rome had mounted the stairs, and waved in bloody
triumph their reeking swords! I gained the steps; and, as I looked up,
they flung down at me the body of my youngest child. O Hermanric!
Hermanric