A Struggle for Rome, v. 3

by Felix Dahn

A few weeks after the conquest of Rome, a royal messenger carried the following letter over the Cottian Alps into Provence:

"To Julius Manilius Montanus, Totila, who is called the King of the Goths.

"Come, my beloved friend, return to my heart! Years have passed; much blood has been shed, and many tears have fallen. More than once, terribly or fortunately, has everything changed around me since I pressed your hand for the last time. Everything around me has changed, but I remain the same. All is as it was between you and me. I still revere the idols at whose shrines we worshipped together in the first dreams of our youth, but growing experience has ennobled these idols. When sin, treachery, and all dark powers raged upon Italian soil, you abandoned it. See, they have disappeared, like moisture in the sun and wind. The conquered demons growl in the distance, and a rainbow stretches its brilliant arch over this my beloved kingdom. When nobler souls unhappily succumbed. Heaven preserved me to see the end of the fearful storm and to sow the seeds of a new time. Come now, my Julius; help me to carry out those dreams at which you so often smiled, thinking them mere dreams. Help me to create a new people of Goths and Italians, which will unite the advantages and exclude the weaknesses of both nations. Help me to found a realm of justice and of peace, of freedom and of beauty, ennobled by Italian grace, and strengthened by Gothic endurance. You, my Julius, have built a cloister for the Church--help me to build a temple for humanity. I am lonely, friend, at the summit of fortune. Lonely my bride awaits the full completion of my vow. The war has robbed me of my devoted brother. Will you not come, my Dioscuros? In two months I shall expect you at Taginæ with Valeria."

Julius read; and with emotion said to himself: "My friend, I come!"

Before King Totila left Rome for Taginæ, he resolved to pay an old debt of gratitude, and to give a worthy, that is a beautiful, form to an old connection that, until now, had not satisfied the desire for harmony which possessed his soul--his connection with the first hero of his nation, with Teja.

They had been friends from their earliest boyhood. Although Teja was several years older, he had always perceived and honoured the depth of the younger man's nature under the brilliant husk of his joyous temperament. And a common inclination to enthusiasm and idealism, besides a certain pride and magnanimity, had drawn them early together. Later, however, their opposite fates had caused their originally very different natures to deviate more and more.

The sunny brightness of the one seemed to contrast with the austerity of the other with painful brilliancy. And Totila, after repeated and impetuous attempts to dispel the gloom of his silent friend--the cause of which he did not know, and the nature of which he did not understand--had at last, attributing it to a morbid mind, withdrawn to a distance.

The milder, though grave and softer influence of Julius, and his passion for Valeria, gradually estranged Totila from the friend of his boyhood.

But the experience of late years, the sufferings and dangers he had endured since the death of Valerius and Miriam, the burning of Neapolis, the distress of Rome, the crimes committed at Ravenna and Castra Nova, and lately the cares and duties of royalty, had so completely matured the impatient and joyous youth, that he was now able to do full justice to his gloomy friend.

And what had not this friend accomplished since the night when they had sworn brotherhood!