"I have nothing more for you to eat, but plenty to drink! Come!" screamed the woman, and, clasping the elder child round the waist with her right arm, and pressing the younger more firmly to her bosom, she cast herself over the wall into the river.
A cry of horror, followed by curses, ran through the crowd.
"She was mad!" said the Prefect in a loud voice, and rode on.
"No, she was the wisest of us all!" cried a voice from the crowd.
"Silence! Legionaries, sound the trumpets! Forwards! To the Forum!" commanded Cethegus, and the troop of horsemen galloped away.
Across the Fabrician Bridge and through the Carmentalian Gate, the Prefect arrived in the Forum Romanum at the foot of the Capitoline Hill.
The wide space appeared almost empty; the few thousand people who, clad in miserable garments, crouched upon the steps of the temple and halls, or supported themselves on their staffs or spears, made little impression.
"What does the Prefect want?"--"What can he want? we have nothing left but our lives."--"And those he will--" "Do you know that the day before yesterday the coast town Centumcellæ surrendered to the Goths?"--"Yes; the citizens overpowered the Prefect's Isaurians and opened the gates."--"Would that we could follow their example!"--"We must do it soon, or it will be too late."--"Yesterday my brother fell down dead, some boiled nettles still in his mouth. He was too weak to swallow the mess."---"Yesterday in the Forum Boarium a mouse was sold for its weight in gold!"--"For a week I got roasted meat from a butcher--he would not sell the flesh raw."--"You were lucky! They storm all houses where they smell roast meat!"--"But the day before yesterday he was torn to pieces by the mob, for he had enticed beggar-children into his house--and that was the flesh he had sold us!"--"But do you know what the Gothic King does with his prisoners? He treats them as a father treats his helpless children; and most of them enter his army at once."--"Yes, and those who will not he provides with money for the journey."--"Yes, and with clothes and shoes and provisions. The sick and wounded are nursed."--"And he gives them guides to the coast towns."--"And sometimes he even pays for their passage in merchant-ships to the East."--"Look, the Prefect dismounts!"
"He looks like Pluto!"
"He is no longer Princeps Senatus, but Princeps Inferorum."