th year, to help to man the walls. Silence!
Do not murmur. I shall send my tribunes and the lance-bearers into
every house--only to prevent boys of too tender years and too aged men
from volunteering their services--then why do you murmur? Does any one
know of something better? Let him speak out boldly; from this place,
which I now vacate in his favour."

At this, the group at which the Prefect looked became perfectly silent.

But behind him, amid those whom his eye could not intimidate, there
arose a threatening cry:

"Bread!" "Surrender!" "Bread!"

Cethegus turned.

"Are you not ashamed? You, worthy of your great name, have borne so
much, and now, when it is only necessary to hold out a little longer,
you would succumb? In a few days Belisarius will bring relief."

"You told us so seven times already!"

"And after the seventh time Belisarius lost almost all his ships.

"Which now aid in blocking our harbour!"

"You should name a term; a limit to this misery. My heart bleeds for
this people!"

"Who are you?" the Prefect asked the invisible speaker of the last
sentence; "you can be no Roman!"

"I am Pelagius the deacon, a Christian and a priest of the Lord. And I
fear not man but God. The King of the Goths, although a heretic, has
promised to restore to the orthodox the churches of which his
fellow-heretics, the Arians, have deprived them, in every town which
surrenders. Three times already has he sent a herald to the citizens of
Rome with the most lenient proposals--they have never been permitted to
speak to us."

"Be silent, priest! You have no fatherland but heaven; no people but
the communion of saints; no army but that of the angels. Manage your
heavenly kingdom, but leave to men the kingdom of the Romans."

"But the man of God is right!"

"Set us a term."

"A short one!"

"Till then we will still hold out."

"But if it elapse without relief----"

"Then we will surrender!"

"We will open the gates."

But Cethegus shunned this thought. Not having received news from the
outer world for weeks, he had no idea when Belisarius could possibly
arrive at the mouth of the Tiber.

"What!" he cried. "Shall I fix a term during which you will remain
Romans, and after which you will become cowards and slaves! Honour
knows no term!"

"You speak thus, because you do not believe in the reinforcements."

"I speak thus, because I believe in _you_!"

"But we will have a term. We are resolved. You spea