empty counter, the beggar rises from his kennel in the butcher's vacant
out-house, the slave deserts his place by the smouldering kitchen-fire--
all hurry to swell the numbers of the guests that are bidden to the
wretched feast. Rapidly and confusedly, the congregation in the basilica
pours through its lofty gates; the priests and penitents retire from the
altar's foot, and in the great church, so crowded by a few moments
before, there now only remains the figure of a solitary man.


Since the commencement of the service, neither addressed nor observed,
this lonely being has faltered round the circle of the congregation,
gazing long and wistfully over the faces that met his view. Now that
the sermon is ended, and the last lingerer has quitted the church, he
turns from the spot whence he has anxiously watched the different
members of the departing throng, and feebly crouches down on his knees
at the base of a pillar that is near him. His eyes are hollow, and his
cheeks are wan; his thin grey hairs are few and fading on his aged head.
He makes no effort to follow the crowd and partake their sustenance; no
one is left behind to urge, no one returns to lead him to the public
meal. Though weak and old, he is perfectly forsaken in his loneliness,
perfectly unsolaced in his grief; his friends have lost all trace of
him; his enemies have ceased to fear or to hate him now. As he crouches
by the pillar alone, he covers his forehead with his pale, palsied
hands, his dim eyes fill with bitter tears, and such expressions as
these are ever and anon faintly audible in the intervals of his heavy
sighs: 'Day after day! Day after day! And my lost one is not found!
my loved and wronged one is not restored! Antonina! Antonina!'

Some days after the public distribution of food in the square of St.
John Lateran, Vetranio's favourite freedman might have been observed