rld. The lapse of
four hundred years had restored to nature his artificial landscape: the
Vale of Tempe had forgotten its name; Peneus and Alpheus flowed
unnoticed through tracts of wood or wilderness; but upon the multitude
of edifices, the dwellings, theatres, hippodromes, galleries, lecture
halls, no destroyer's hand had yet fallen. They abounded in things
beautiful, in carving and mosaic, in wall-painting and tapestries, in
statues which had been the glory of Greece, and in marble portraiture
which was the boast of Rome. Here, amid the decay of ancient splendour
and the luxuriance of the triumphing earth, King Totila made his
momentary abode; with him, in Hadrian's palace, housed the Gothic
warrior-nobles, and a number of ladies, their wives and relatives, who
made, as it were, a wandering court. Honour, pride, and cheerful
courage were the notable characteristics of these Gothic women. What
graces they had they owed to nature, not to any cultivation of the
mind. Their health Buffered in a nomadic life from the ills of the
country, the dangers of the climate, and the children by whom a few
were accompanied, showed a degeneracy of blood which threatened the
race with extinction.

Foremost in rank among them was Athalfrida, sister to the king, and
wife of a brawny lord named Osuin. Though not yet five and twenty years
old, Athalfrida had borne seven children, of whom five died in
babyhood. A creature of magnificent form, and in earlier life of superb
vigour, her paling cheek told of decline that had begun; nevertheless
her spirits were undaunted; and her voice, in gay talk, in song or in
laughter, sounded constantly about the halls and wild gardens. Merry by
choice, she had in her a vein of tenderness which now and then
(possibly due to failing health) became excessive, causing her to shed
abundant tears with little or no cause, and to be over lavish of
endearments with those she loved or merely liked. Athalfrida worshipped
her husband; in her brother saw the ideal hero. She was ardent in
racial feeling, thought nothing good but what was Gothic, and hated the
Italians for their lack of gratitude to the people of Theodoric.

To her the king had intrusted Veranilda. Knowing her origin and
history, Athalfrida, in the beginning, could not but look coldly upon
her charge. The daughter of a Gothic renegade, the betrothed of a Roman
noble, and finally an apostate from the creed of her race-how could
such an one expect more