How changed was the scene which met his eye from that which he had passed through on the preceding night! The Huns were gone; scarcely a vestige of them remained; not a wagon, not a group was to be seen over all that wide plain, except where, before the door of the tent, ten or twelve of the Huns, and an equal number of the Alani, taller, stronger, and fairer to look upon than their dark companions, employed the vacant hours in packing a number of small and strangely-assorted articles into two of the low wagons which had formed part of the night's circle round the tent. The sun was not very far from its meridian, and Theodore saw that he must have slept long and profoundly, but yet he was not refreshed. There was a weariness, a heaviness upon his limbs that he had never felt before--a burning heat upon his skin, that the cooler climate in which he now was placed could not have produced.
Nevertheless, he gladly prepared to depart, and bade the attendants who had been assigned to him make all things ready, while he went to bathe his feverish body in a small stream that his eye caught glistening on at a short distance upon its way to join the rushing waters of the Danube. The cool wave, however, proved no refreshment, and only caused a chilly shudder to pass over his limbs, succeeded quickly by the same heat as before. On his return he found food prepared, but he could not eat; and though his lip loathed the wine they offered, he drank a deep draught from the horn of a urus, for the sake of gaining that temporary strength of which he felt himself to stand in need.
His own horse, fresh as the early morning from a night of repose, stood near, but the horses of the barbarians were still straying over the plain. A shrill, long whistle, however, brought them in a moment to their masters' sides, and small grooming did the rude riders of the Dacian wilds bestow upon their swift but rugged beasts. The tent was by this time struck and placed upon the wagons; and Theodore, with one of the Huns beside him to guide him as he went, led the way onward towards that strange land which seemed thenceforward destined to be his home for many a long year. Of his guide he asked various questions, and was answered fluently in his own language; but at length Cremera, who followed, pointed towards the towers of a far distant city, saying, "Is not that Margus?"
"It is," answered the Hun. "We can go thither if thou wilt," he continued, addressing Theodore. "We can repose there to-morrow night. It is now a city belonging to Attila the King."
"No, no," replied Theodore, with many a painful feeling at the very thought finding expression on his countenance--"no, no, not in the city for a thousand worlds; rather let us lodge in the open field."
"Thou art wise, young chief," replied the Hun. "Cities are hateful places: Attila loves them not any more than thou dost; and, though Margus is his, he will not keep it long, but will either sell it back to the Romans or destroy it."
Theodore replied not; and they rode on till at length, towards eventide, they came near the banks of the Danube, and, after half an hour's riding within sight of the river, halted for the night on a spot near the old Roman way from M[oe]sia into Dacia. Theodore was fatigued, but yet he could not rest; and while they were engaged in setting up his tent, he wandered forward to drink of the great river.
It was a sweet, bright, tranquil afternoon. The sun was just dipping beneath the wood-covered hills upon the opposite bank of the river, but the air was still full of his light; and the forests and mountains, the soft green slopes, the blue sky, and the light passing cloud, were mirrored in the swift waters of the mighty stream, as it flowed on towards the ocean. The air, too, was calm; and silence hung above the world, except when the laughing note of the woodpecker, or the melody of the thrush, broke the silence for a moment, to render it more calm and sweet. Theodore gazed up the stream, and beheld afar gigantic masses of masonry, rifted and broken, projecting from either bank, while here and there, from the broad sealike bosom of the Danube, rose up massy piers and woodwork, the fragments of some vast fabric swept away.
It was evidently the famous bridge of Trajan that stood before him, just as the destroying hand of his envious successor had left it; and as Theodore gazed upon the remnants of that stupendous work, as they stood in the clear light and shade of evening, he could not but meditate upon the change of dynasties, the vanity of human hopes, the fruitlessness of earthly endeavours, and all the many and melancholy themes on which poet and philosopher have sung and moralized, hoping, even while they did so, for that earthly immortality which they knew and proved to be a bubble. There before his eyes stood one of the greatest works of one of the greatest men that the human race, in all its vast succession of beings, in all its complexity of characters, in all its variety of qualities, has ever produced, from the creation till to-day; and yet a mean follower, unable to compete with him in intellect, in feeling, in effort, or in success, had possessed the power to sweep away from off the earth that majestic monument of a grand and creative mind, to cast down what the good and wise had raised up, to destroy what the noble and energetic had created.
"Oh, wonderful frailty of man's most lasting works!" thought the young Roman; "that nothing can give them certain existence, no, not for a century. That which the earthquake spares, the hand of war and violence pulls down; that which hostile armies have respected, the mean envy of inferior genius will destroy. Alas! when we look around, and think of the work of but a few short lustres upon man's noblest efforts and his brightest productions, well, well may we ask, What is lasting upon earth?"