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263 pages

English

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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. In preparing to compose a fiction founded on history, the writer of these pages thought it no necessary requisite of such a work that the principal characters appearing in it should be drawn from the historical personages of the period. On the contrary, he felt that some very weighty objections attached to this plan of composition. He knew well that it obliged a writer to add largely from invention to what was actually known - to fill in with the colouring of romantic fancy the bare outline of historic fact - and thus to place the novelist's fiction in what he could not but consider most unfavourable contrast to the historian's truth. He was further by no means convinced that any story in which historical characters supplied the main agents, could be preserved in its fit unity of design and restrained within its due limits of development, without some falsification or confusion of historical dates - a species of poetical licence of which he felt no disposition to avail himself, as it was his main anxiety to make his plot invariably arise and proceed out of the great events of the era exactly in the order in which they occurred

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	23 octobre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819917502
Langue	English

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PREFACE
In preparing to compose a fiction founded onhistory, the writer of these pages thought it no necessaryrequisite of such a work that the principal characters appearing init should be drawn from the historical personages of the period. Onthe contrary, he felt that some very weighty objections attached tothis plan of composition. He knew well that it obliged a writer toadd largely from invention to what was actually known - to fill inwith the colouring of romantic fancy the bare outline of historicfact - and thus to place the novelist's fiction in what he couldnot but consider most unfavourable contrast to the historian'struth. He was further by no means convinced that any story in whichhistorical characters supplied the main agents, could be preservedin its fit unity of design and restrained within its due limits ofdevelopment, without some falsification or confusion of historicaldates - a species of poetical licence of which he felt nodisposition to avail himself, as it was his main anxiety to makehis plot invariably arise and proceed out of the great events ofthe era exactly in the order in which they occurred.
Influenced, therefore, by these considerations, hethought that by forming all his principal characters fromimagination, he should be able to mould them as he pleased to themain necessities of the story; to display them, without anyimpropriety, as influenced in whatever manner appeared moststrikingly interesting by its minor incidents; and further, to makethem, on all occasions, without trammel or hindrance, the practicalexponents of the spirit of the age, of all the various historicalillustrations of the period, which the Author's researches amongconflicting but equally important authorities had enabled him togarner up, while, at the same time, the appearance ofverisimilitude necessary to an historical romance might, heimagined, be successfully preserved by the occasional introductionof the living characters of the era, in those portions of the plotcomprising events with which they had been remarkablyconnected.
On this plan the recent work has been produced.
To the fictitious characters alone is committed thetask of representing the spirit of the age. The Roman emperor,Honorius, and the Gothic king, Alaric, mix but little personally inthe business of the story - only appearing in such events, andacting under such circumstances, as the records of history strictlyauthorise; but exact truth in respect to time, place, andcircumstance is observed in every historical event introduced inthe plot, from the period of the march of the Gothic invaders overthe Alps to the close of the first barbarian blockade of Rome.
CHAPTER 1. GOISVINTHA.
The mountains forming the range of Alps which borderon the north-eastern confines of Italy, were, in the autumn of theyear 408, already furrowed in numerous directions by the tracks ofthe invading forces of those northern nations generally comprisedunder the appellation of Goths.
In some places these tracks were denoted on eitherside by fallen trees, and occasionally assumed, when halfobliterated by the ravages of storms, the appearance of desolateand irregular marshes. In other places they were less palpable.Here, the temporary path was entirely hidden by the incursions of aswollen torrent; there, it was faintly perceptible in occasionalpatches of soft ground, or partly traceable by fragments ofabandoned armour, skeletons of horses and men, and remnants of therude bridges which had once served for passage across a river ortransit over a precipice.
Among the rocks of the topmost of the range ofmountains immediately overhanging the plains of Italy, andpresenting the last barrier to the exertions of a traveller or themarch of an invader, there lay, at the beginning of the fifthcentury, a little lake. Bounded on three sides by precipices, itsnarrow banks barren of verdure or habitations, and its dark andstagnant waters brightened but rarely by the presence of the livelysunlight, this solitary spot - at all times mournful - presented,on the autumn of the day when our story commences, an aspect ofdesolation at once dismal to the eye and oppressive to theheart.
It was near noon; but no sun appeared in the heaven.The dull clouds, monotonous in colour and form, hid all beauty inthe firmament, and shed heavy darkness on the earth. Dense,stagnant vapours clung to the mountain summits; from the droopingtrees dead leaves and rotten branches sunk, at intervals, on theoozy soil, or whirled over the gloomy precipice; and a small steadyrain fell, slow and unintermitting, upon the deserts around.Standing upon the path which armies had once trodden, and whicharmies were still destined to tread, and looking towards thesolitary lake, you heard, at first, no sound but the regulardripping of the rain-drops from rock to rock; you saw no prospectbut the motionless waters at your feet, and the dusky crags whichshadowed them from above. When, however, impressed by themysterious loneliness of the place, the eye grew more penetratingand the ear more attentive, a cavern became apparent in theprecipices round the lake; and, in the intervals of the heavyrain-drops, were faintly perceptible the sounds of a humanvoice.
The mouth of the cavern was partly concealed by alarge stone, on which were piled some masses of rotten brushwood,as if for the purpose of protecting any inhabitant it might containfrom the coldness of the atmosphere without. Placed at the eastwardboundary of the lake, this strange place of refuge commanded a viewnot only of the rugged path immediately below it, but of a largeplot of level ground at a short distance to the west, whichoverhung a second and lower range of rocks. From this spot might beseen far beneath, on days when the atmosphere was clear, the olivegrounds that clothed the mountain's base, and beyond, stretchingaway to the distant horizon, the plains of fated Italy, whosedestiny of defeat and shame was now hastening to its dark andfearful accomplishment.
The cavern, within, was low and irregular in form.From its rugged walls the damp oozed forth upon its floor ofdecayed moss. Lizards and noisome animals had tenanted itscomfortless recesses undisturbed, until the period we have justdescribed, when their miserable rights were infringed on for thefirst time by human intruders.
A woman crouched near the entrance of the place.More within, on the driest part of the ground, lay a child asleep.Between them were scattered some withered branches and decayedleaves, which were arranged as if to form a fire. In many partsthis scanty collection of fuel was slightly blackened; but, wettedas it was by the rain, all efforts to light it permanently hadevidently been fruitless.
The woman's head was bent forwards, and her face,hid in her hands, rested on her knees. At intervals she muttered toherself in a hoarse, moaning voice. A portion of her scantyclothing had been removed to cover the child. What remained on herwas composed, partly of skins of animals, partly of coarse cottoncloth. In many places this miserable dress was marked with blood,and her long, flaxen hair bore upon its dishevelled locks the sameominous and repulsive stain.
The child seemed scarcely four years of age, andshowed on his pale, thin face all the peculiarities of his Gothicorigin. His features seemed to have been once beautiful, both inexpression and form; but a deep wound, extending the whole lengthof his cheek, had now deformed him for ever. He shivered andtrembled in his sleep, and every now and then mechanicallystretched forth his little arms towards the dead cold branches thatwere scattered before him.
Suddenly a large stone became detached from the rockin a distant part of the cavern, and fell noisily to the ground. Atthis sound he woke with a scream - raised himself - endeavoured toadvance towards the woman, and staggered backward against the sideof the cave. A second wound in the leg had wreaked that destructionon his vigour which the first had effected on his beauty. He was acripple.
At the instant of his awakening the woman hadstarted up. She now raised him from the ground, and taking someherbs from her bosom, applied them to his wounded cheek. By thisaction her dress became discomposed: it was stiff at the top withcoagulated blood, which had evidently flowed from a cut in herneck.
All her attempts to compose the child were in vain;he moaned and wept piteously, muttering at intervals his disjointedexclamations of impatience at the coldness of the place and theagony of his recent wounds. Speechless and tearless the wretchedwoman looked vacantly down on his face. There was little difficultyin discerning from that fixed, distracted gaze the nature of thetie that bound the mourning woman to the suffering boy. Theexpression of rigid and awful despair that lowered in her fixed,gloomy eyes, the livid paleness that discoloured her compressedlips, the spasms that shook her firm, commanding form, mutelyexpressing in the divine eloquence of human emotion that betweenthe solitary pair there existed the most intimate of earth'srelationships - the connection of mother and child.
For some time no change occurred in the woman'sdemeanour. At last, as if struck by some sudden suspicion, sherose, and clasping the child in one arm, displaced with the otherthe brushwood at the entrance of her place of refuge, cautiouslylooking forth on all that the mists left visible of the westernlandscape. After a short survey she drew back as if reassured bythe unbroken solitude of the place, and turning towards the lake,looked down upon the black waters at her feet.
'Night has succeeded to night,' she mutteredgloomily, 'and has brought no succour to my body, and no hope to myheart! Mile on mile have I journeyed, and danger is still behind,and loneliness for ever before. The shadow of death deepens overthe boy; the burden of anguish grows weightier than I can bear. Forme, friends are murdered, defenders are