“Miriam, my wife,” he said, “I have brought you all into this den of lions, and I am no Daniel; and I had no command to come!”
As he spoke, a procession of clergy drew near in white robes, and at the head the aged Bishop in full sacerdotal vestments. Slowly they advanced, chanting the psalms of Eleazar’s own people, in Latin, David’s familiar Miserere, “In the multitude of Thy mercies, blot out my iniquities.” And the old Jew reverently bent his head, swept away on the tide of prayer. It seemed also as if some individual arrow had pierced his own conscience, for as the captives followed the procession, and he was left alone with his wife, he said to her—
“I had no call to come hither; no call to make slaves of these children! Miriam, what is driving me hither and thither through the earth? Surely there is the child; we shall find her; we will ransom her and make her all a child of our house has a right to be. It is for her I am striving and bargaining, and wandering like Cain to and fro through the earth. But is it of the Lord? Or can it be that the Adversary is hunting me hither and thither by his enchantments?”
Then, after some hesitation, Miriam ventured to say, in a voice quivering with emotion—
“Have you not told me, my beloved, that there is an idol, an enchantment, an enchanter, a thing, a demon, called Mammon?”
“It may be,” he replied, with a startled look of horror, as one half-waking from a nightmare. “But however that may be, this Bishop has the look of an Elijah. Let us go in and pray!”
Slowly the procession moved on with the Bishop at its head, and closely following him, a young deacon called Nemorius, clasping to his breast the book of the Gospels bound in gold. Numbers of the townspeople were following. Ethne returned to Miriam, but Baithene was swept on in the tide.
Close on the outskirts of the town they encountered the advance-guard of the host pressing on to the plunder of the city. The nimble brown men with the swift horses, which were as part of themselves, wheeled around them. Javelins were raised to hurl at them, spears were pointed, with the fierce howls and cries which seemed to have caught the tone of the wild beasts of the desert. Nor were these aimless, unmeaning menaces. Even while the procession advanced towards the enemy, Attila had given the order to cut them all down. Nemorius the young deacon fell pierced to death, with his golden Gospels still clasped to his breast; and many sank wounded or dead beside him. It seemed as if there would be a general massacre. But still the old Bishop Lupus pressed on, until he reached Attila; and then, something in the venerable figure and the worn, aged face, with its fire undimmed by the seventy years, something in the man himself, seemed suddenly to impress the fierce and haughty conqueror who had insulted emperors without fear, and had destroyed cities and devastated provinces without mercy.
Attila gave order for the carnage to cease, and at a nod, at a look from him, javelins were lowered, spears were couched, the eager war-horses were held in check, and the procession with the white-haired Bishop in his priestly robes stood still, surrounded by the checked host of foes, confronting the Desolator of nations.