“It is as good as living in the house or tent of the old chieftain Job,” she said, “to be here. Of course we know the world is not right, nor, it seems, even the Church here on earth. And yet it is better than being with Job, because the venerable Salvian knows the Gospels, and is always sure of the victory of good.”
“He sees how the battle is lost,” Marius said, “and that is a great part of the lesson how it is to be won. ‘Our own vices are killing us,’ Salvian says; and there is always hope if we can learn that the fault is our own.”
They returned from Gaul by the eastern coast of Italy. Marius had a desire to show Ethne where the city of Aquileia had been. The Roman roads along the Adriatic, which had led to the ruined cities of Altinum, Concordia, and Aquileia, still remained, though the cities to which they led had vanished for ever, under the devastations of the Huns. They stood among the charred ruins of Aquileia by the clear stream of the Natiso; and from the abandoned quays of the great commercial port they chartered a vessel from Ravenna to take them thither by the coast. As they sailed along the low shores, they saw a few poor huts on a cluster of islands, with shallow channels between, peopled by fugitives from the ruined cities. They knew not that this cluster of huts would grow into Venice, any more than they could foresee the fiery flood of Moslem invasion from Arabia which Venice was to help to stem. But as they landed and spent a few hours among the refugees in those huts, and listened to their tales of wrong and ruin, and saw their brave battle of resistance with the seas and sands, Ethne, always in sympathy with suffering and toil, felt there a breath of life and hope which she missed afterwards amidst the empty pomp of Imperial Ravenna.
CHAPTER XXVI.
“THE HOLD OF EVERY FOUL SPIRIT,” “I SIT A QUEEN.”
It was in the glow of an autumn evening that Ethne and Marius, with their little Paul, the Irish nurse, Dewi and the dog, reached the Aventine, in the autumn of the year of our Lord 454.