It is morning. A sad and noiseless throng is advancing over the cold
flagstones of the great square before the Basilica of St. John Lateran.
The members of the assembly speak in whispers. The weak are tearful--the
strong are gloomy--they all move with slow and languid gait, and hold in
their arms their dogs or other domestic animals. On the outskirts of
the crowd march the enfeebled guards of the city, grasping in their
rough hands rare favourite birds of gaudy plumage and melodious note,
and followed by children and young girls vainly and piteously entreating
that their favourites may be restored.

This strange procession pauses, at length, before a mighty caldron slung
over a great fire in the middle of the square, round which stand the
city butchers with bare knives, and the trustiest men of the Roman
legions with threatening weapons. A proclamation is then repeated,
commanding the populace who have no money left to purchase food, to
bring up their domestic animals to be boiled together over the public
furnace, for the sake of contributing to the public support.

The next minute, in pursuance of this edict, the dumb favourites of the
crowd passed from the owner's caressing hand into the butcher's ready
grasp. The faint cries of the animals, starved like their masters,
mingled for a few moments with the sobs and lamentations of the women
and children, to whom the greater part of them belonged. For, in this
the first stage of their calamities, that severity of hunger which
extinguishes pity and estranges grief was unknown to the populace; and
though fast losing spirit, they had not yet sunk to the depths of
ferocious despair which even now were invisibly opening between them. A
thousand pangs were felt, a thousand humble tragedies were acted, in the
brief moments of separation between guardian and charge. The child