rving people on Pappua? Is it disgraceful to serve
the same lord as Belisarius? Cast aside this folly, admirable Gelimer!
Think, I myself am a German, a member of a noble Herulian family. My
ancestors wore the badge of royalty of our people in the old home on
the shore of the dashing sea, near the islands of the Danes--and yet I
serve the Emperor, and am proud of it. My sword and the swift daring of
my Herulians decided the victory on the day of Belisarius's greatest
battle. I am a general, and have remained a hero, even in the Emperor's
service. The same fate will await you. Belisarius will secure you on
his word of honor life, liberty, estates in Asia Minor, the rank of a
patrician, and a leadership in the army directly under him. Dear
Gelimer, noble King, I mean kindly by you. Defiance is beautiful, but
folly is--foolish. Make an end of it!"

* * * * *

The messenger has returned. He saw the King himself. He says the sight
of him was almost enough to startle one to death. He looks like a ghost
or the King of Shades; gloomy eyes burn from a spectral face. Yet when
the unyielding hero read the well-meant consolation of his kind-hearted
fellow-countryman, he wept. The very man who struck down the
unconquerable Fara and endures superhuman privations wept like a boy or
a woman. Here is the Vandal's answer:--

"I thank you for your counsel. I cannot follow it. You have given up
your people; therefore you are drifting on the sea of the world like a
blade of straw. I was, I am King of the Vandals. I will not serve the
unjust foe of my people. God, so I believe, commands me and the remnant
of the Vandals to hold out even now. He can save me if He so wills. I
can write no more. The misery surrounding me benumbs my thoughts. Good
Fara, send me a loaf of bread; a delicate boy, the son of a dead noble,
is lying very ill, in the fever caused by starvation. He begs, he
pleads, he shrieks for bread--it tears one's heart-strings! For a long
time not one of us has tasted bread.

"And a sponge dipped in water; my eyes, inflamed by watching and
weeping, burn painfully.

"And a harp. I have composed a dirge upon our fate, which I would fain
sing to the accompaniment of the harp."

Fara granted the three requests,--the harp could be obtained only by
sending to the nearest city,--but he guards even more closely than
before the "Mountain of Misery," as our people call it.