empty dishes!' cried Vetranio, pouring the sparkling Falernian into his
empty glass. 'The last banquet given in Rome, ere the city is
annihilated, will be mine! The Goths and the famine shall have no part
in my death! Pleasure shall preside at my last moments, as it has
presided at my whole life! I will die like Sardanapalus, with my loves
and my treasures around me, and the last of my guests who remains proof
against our festivity shall set fire to my palace, as the kingly
Assyrian set fire to his!'


'This is no season for jesting,' exclaimed the Prefect, staring round
him with bewildered eyes and colourless cheeks. 'Our miseries are but
dawning as yet! In the next street lies the corpse of a woman, and--
horrible omen!--a coil of serpents is wreathed about her neck! We have
no burial-place to receive her, and the thousands who may die like her,
ere assistance arrives. The city sepulchres outside the walls are in
the hands of the Goths. The people stand round the body in a trance of
horror, for they have now discovered a fatal truth we would fain have
concealed from them;' here the Prefect paused, looked round affrightedly
on his listeners, and then added in low trembling tones--

'The citizens are lying dead from famine in the streets of Rome!'


CHAPTER 15. THE CITY AND THE GODS.

We return once more to the Gothic encampment in the suburbs eastward of
the Pincian Gate, and to Hermanric and the warriors under his command,
who are still posted at that particular position on the great circle of
the blockade.