It was the great Theodoric.
The art which had been introduced to the Romans by the Egyptians--the art of embalming the dead--had preserved the body of the hero-King with terrible perfection.
All present were struck dumb with emotion.
"Many years ago," at last Hildebrand began, "Teja and I mistrusted the good fortune of the Goths. And I, who, before the breaking out of the war, had the command of the guard-of-honour at the Mausoleum of Ravenna, in which Amalaswintha had interred her dead father--I liked the building but little, and still less the incense-scented priests who so often prayed there for the soul of my good and great King--I thought that if ever all trace of my nation were rooted out of this southern land, no Italian or Greekling should mock at the remains of our beloved hero. No! even as the first great conqueror of the Roman fortress, Alaric the Visigoth, found his unknown and never to be dishonoured tomb in the sacred bed of the stream, so also should my great King be delivered from the curiosity of posterity. And, with Teja's help, I took the noble corpse away by night, from its marble house, and from the vicinity of the whining priests, and we brought it hither, as part of the royal treasure. Here it was safe. And if, after the lapse of centuries, some accident should betray its resting-place, who could then recognise the King with the eagle-eye? And so the sarcophagus at Ravenna is empty, and the monks sing and pray in vain. Here, near his treasures and his trophies, in hero splendour, erect upon his throne, he rests; it is more pleasing to his soul, which looks down from Walhalla, than to see his mortal remains stretched out, weighed down by heavy stones, and surrounded with clouds of incense."
"But now," concluded Teja, "the hour has come for him once more to rise from the abyss. When you have raised the treasure, we will carefully lift up this beloved form. Early to-morrow we will march out of this city. The approach of Narses and the Prefect has already been announced. We will go, with royal corpse and royal treasure, to the last battle-field of the Goths, whither I have already sent the women and children. The battle-field--long ago I saw it in the visions of my sleepless nights--the battle-field whereon we and our nation will gloriously perish; the battlefield which, even when the last spear is broken, can save and hide all who do not fear to die in its glowing bosom; the battle-field which Teja has chosen for you and for himself!"
"I guess thy meaning," whispered Adalgoth; "this last battle-field is----"
"Mons Vesuvius!" said Teja. "To work!"
CHAPTER IV.
As rapidly as his fearful, all-encompassing system would allow, Narses, after the council which we have mentioned as taking place at Fossatum, had marched southward with his whole force and with the broadest front, in order to make an end of all the remaining Goths. Only to Tuscany did he send two small detachments, under his generals, Vitalianus and Wilmuth, to take such forts as still resisted, and, after them, Lucca, in Annonarian Tuscany. Valerianus, who had meanwhile conquered Petra Pertusa, which place blocked the Flaminian Way beyond Helvillum, was sent still farther north against Verona, the obstinate defence of which had enabled many Goths to escape up the valley of the Athesis to the Passara.
With these exceptions, Narses hurried south with the whole of his army. He himself passed Rome on the Flaminian Way; while Johannes, on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea, and the Herulian Vulkaris on that of the Ionian Gulf, were to drive the Goths before them.