And yet those two young staff officers, when they left the imperial
court for the hermit's cell, judged, on the whole, prudently and
well, and chose the better part when they fled from the world to
escape the "dangers" of ambition, and the "greater danger still" of
success. For they escaped, not merely from vice and worldliness,
but, as the event proved, from imminent danger of death if they kept
the loyalty which they had sworn to their emperor; or the worse evil
of baseness if they turned traitors to him to save their lives.

For little thought Gratian, as he sat in that amphitheatre, that the
day was coming when he, the hunter of game--and of heretics--would
be hunted in his turn; when, deserted by his army, betrayed by
Merobaudes--whose elder kinsfolk were not likely to have kept him
ignorant of "the Frankish sports "--he should flee pitiably towards
Italy, and die by a German hand; some say near Lyons, some say near
Belgrade, calling on Ambrose with his latest breath. {29} Little
thought, too, the good folk of Treves, as they sat beneath the vast
awning that afternoon, that within the next half century a day of
vengeance was coming for them, which should teach them that there
was a God who "maketh inquisition for blood;" a day when Treves
should be sacked in blood and flame by those very "barbarian"
Germans whom they fancied their allies--or their slaves. And least
of all did they fancy that, when that great destruction fell upon
their city, the only element in it which would pass safely through
the fire and rise again, and raise their city to new glory and
power, was that which was represented by those poor hermits in the
garden-hut outside. Little thought they that above the awful arches
of the Black Gate--as if in mockery of the Roman Power--a lean
anchorite would take his stand, Simeon of Syracuse by name, a monk