Sometimes, when darkness had gathered over
the earth, she would stand--a boding and menacing apparition--upon the
grave itself, and chaunt, moaning to the moaning wind, fragments of
obscure Northern legends, whose hideous burden was ever of anguish and
crime, of torture in prison vaults, and death by the annihilating
sword--mingling with them the gloomy story of the massacre at Aquileia,
and her fierce vows of vengeance against the households of Rome. The
forager, on his late return past the farm-house to the camp, heard the
harsh, droning accents of her voice, and quickened his onward step.
The venturesome peasant from the country beyond, approaching under
cover of the night to look from afar on the Gothic camp, beheld her
form, shadowy and threatening, as he neared the garden, and fled
affrighted from the place. Neither stranger nor friend intruded on her
dread solitude. The foul presence of cruelty and crime violated
undisturbed the scenes once sacred to the interests of tenderness and
love, once hallowed by the sojourn of youth and beauty!

But now the farm-house garden is left solitary, the haunting spirit of
evil has departed from the grave, the footsteps of Goisvintha have
traced to their close the same paths from the suburbs over which the
young Goth once eagerly hastened on his night journey of love; and
already the walls of Rome rise--dark, near, and hateful--before her
eyes. Along these now useless bulwarks of the fallen city she wanders,
as she has often wandered before, watching anxiously for the first
opening of the long-closed gates. Let us follow her on her way.

Her attention was now fixed only on the broad ramparts, while she
passed slowly along the Gothic tents towards the encampment at the
Pincian Gate. Arrived there, she was aroused for the first time from
her apathy by an unwonted stir and confusion prevailing around her.
She looked towards the tent of Alaric, and beheld before it the wasted
and crouching forms of the followers of the embassy awaiting their
sentence from the captain of the Northern hosts. In a few moments she
gathered enough from the words of the Goths congregated about this part
of the camp to assure her that it was the Pincian Gate which had given
egress to the Roman suppliants, and which would therefore, in all
probability, be the entrance again thrown open to admit their return to
the city. Remembering this, she began to calculate the numbers of the
conquered enemy gro