sailed out with blare of trumpet and roll of drum but one short month
ago?"

The patrician smiled bitterly. "If it were not for our great ancestors
and for our beloved country, the Queen of the Waters," said he,
"I could find it in my heart to be glad at this destruction which has
come upon this vain and feeble generation. You have spent your life
upon the seas, Magro. You do not know of know how it has been with us
on the land. But I have seen this canker grow upon us which now leads
us to our death. I and others have gone down into the market-place to
plead with the people, and been pelted with mud for our pains. Many a
time have I pointed to Rome, and said, 'Behold these people, who bear
arms themselves, each man for his own duty and pride. How can you who
hide behind mercenaries hope to stand against them?'--a hundred times I
have said it."

"And had they no answer?" asked the Rover.

"Rome was far off and they could not see it, so to them it was nothing,"
the old man answered. "Some thought of trade, and some of votes, and
some of profits from the State, but none would see that the State
itself, the mother of all things, was sinking to her end. So might the
bees debate who should have wax or honey when the torch was blazing
which would bring to ashes the hive and all therein. 'Are we not rulers
of the sea?' 'Was not Hannibal a great man?' Such were their cries,
living ever in the past and blind to the future. Before that sun sets
there will be tearing of hair and rending of garments; what will that
now avail us?"

"It is some sad comfort," said Magro, "to know that what Rome holds she