fteen men might lie
side by side. None, you must know, are left now, save a very few in the
Lithuanian forests. Paul goes out of his way to note this fact, and so
shall I.

Alboin left a strong guard in Friuli, and Paul's ancestor among them,
under Gisulf his nephew, and Marphrais or master of the horse, who now
became duke of Friuli and warden of the marches, bound to prevent the
Avars following them into their new abode. Then the human deluge spread
itself slowly over the Lombard plains. None fought with them, and none
gainsaid; for all the land was waste. The plague of three years before,
and the famine which followed it had, says Paul, reduced the world into
primaeval silence. The villages had no inhabitants but dogs; the sheep
were pasturing without a shepherd; the wild birds swarmed unhurt about
the fields. The corn was springing self-sown under the April sun, the
vines sprouting unpruned, the lucerne fields unmown, when the great
Lombard people flowed into that waste land, and gave to it their own
undying name.

The scanty population, worn out with misery, fled to rocks and islands in
the lakes, and to the seaport towns; but they seem to have found the
Lombards merciful masters, and bowed their necks meekly to the inevitable
yoke. The towns alone seem to have offered resistance. Pavia Alboin
besieged three years, and could not take. He swore some wild oath of
utter destruction to all within, and would have kept it. At last they
capitulated. As Alboin rode in at St. John's gate, his horse slipped up;
and could not rise, though the grooms beat him with their lance-butts. A
ghostly fear came on the Lombards. 'Remember, lord king, thy cruel oath,
and cancel it; for there are Christian folk in the city.' Alboin
cancelled his oath, and the horse rose at once. So Alboin spared the
people of Pavia, and entered the palace of old Dietrich the Ostrogoth, as
king of Italy, as far as the gates of Rome and Ravenna.

And what was his end? Such an end as he deserved; earned and worked out
for himself. A great warrior, he had destroyed many nations, and won a
fair land. A just and wise governor, he had settled North Italy on some
rough feudal system, without bloodshed or cruelty. A passionate savage,
he died as savages deserve to die. You recollect Rosamund his Gepid
bride? In some mad drinking-bout (perhaps cherishing still his old
hatred of her family) he sent her her father's skull full of wine, and
ba