r eyes wandered
mechanically from the morsels of food by her side to her sleeping
father, as her one vacant idea of watching for his service, till the
feeble pulses of life had throbbed their last, alternately revived and
declined; but no other evidences of bodily existence or mental activity
appeared in her. As she now sat in the half-darkened room, by the
couch on which her father reposed--her features pale, calm, and rigid,
her form enveloped in cold white drapery--there were moments when she
looked like one of the penitential devotees of the primitive Church,
appointed to watch in the house of mourning, and surprised in her
saintly vigil by the advent of Death.

Time flowed on--the monotonous hours of the day waned again towards
night; and plague and famine told their lapse in the fated highways of
Rome. For father and child the sand in the glass was fast running out,
and neither marked it as it diminished. The sleeper still reposed, and
the guardian by his side still watched; but now her weary gaze was
directed on the street, unconsciously attracted by the sound of voices
which at length rose from it at intervals, and by the light of the
torches and lamps which appeared in the great palace of the senator
Vetranio, as the sun gradually declined in the horizon, and the fiery
clouds around were quenched in the vapours of the advancing night.
Steadily she looked upon the sight beneath and before her; but even yet
her limbs never moved; no expression relieved the blank, solemn
peacefulness of her features.

Meanwhile, the soft, brief twilight glimmered over the earth, and
showed the cold moon, poised solitary in the starless heaven; then, the
stealthy darkness arose at her pale signal, and closed slowly round the
City of Death!

CHAPTER 22.

THE BANQUET OF FAMINE.

Of all prophecies, none are, perhaps, so frequently erroneous as those
on which we are most apt to venture in endeavouring to foretell the
effect of outward events on the characters of men. In no form of our
anticipations are we more frequently baffled than in such attempts to
estimate beforehand the influence of circumstance over conduct, not
only in others, but also even in ourselves. Let the event but happen,
and men, whom we view by the light of our previous observation of them,
act under it as the living contradictions of their own characters. The
friend of our daily social intercourse, in the progress of life, and
the favourite hero of