By dawn of the next morning the Romans themselves removed to a greater distance, and towards noon an order was given for the Hunnish army to prepare to march. None knew the direction that they were about to take, none knew what purpose was in the bosom of the king; and when he himself rode forth among the troops, not even Ardaric, his most familiar friend, was aware of the course they were about to pursue.
A few words announced the intentions of the monarch. "To the south," he said; "I will not be further bearded by these Romans, though they be leagued with all the runaways from the hardy North. On to the south, I say! Let them attack me, if they dare!"
The tone in which he spoke was such as showed no inclination to receive counsel or follow advice, and his orders were instantly obeyed. No obstruction was offered to his march: the Roman army, as a whole, had disappeared; and though from time to time a few small bodies of cavalry was seen upon the right of the Huns, showing that Ætius either followed or accompanied the march of the invaders, yet no attempt was made to bring on a general battle; and when, at the end of a four days' march, the Roman cohorts approached somewhat too near, they were speedily driven back by the Hunnish cavalry.
On the fifth day, towards noon, the towers of a large and important city appeared, crowning the summit of some high hills, round the basis of which the barbarian army had been winding since the morning. Massy walls, close and elevated flanking towers, built from the bowels of the rock on which they stood, announced a well defended fortress, which, in the time of Rome's greatest glory, might well have been looked upon as impregnable. Nevertheless, no sooner did the eyes of Attila rest upon it, after gazing over the country round, as if to ascertain its capabilities for military man[oe]uvres, than, stretching forth his hand towards Langres, he exclaimed, "It must fall! Valamir, my friend, lead the troops to the attack. I, with one fourth part of the army, wait upon this gentle slope for the coming of the Roman, if he dare to show himself. Let not the sun set, and see this city in the hands of the enemy."
Langres fell, and Ætius struck no stroke to relieve it. Some of its inhabitants found means to escape into the recesses of the mountains, and some even hid themselves in various parts of the town, where they were not discovered, but all the rest perished by the sword; and the streets of Langres flowed with human blood. As was very customary with the Huns, it was fired in several places ere they left it as night fell; but the solidity of the buildings, and the incombustible nature of the materials, saved it from anything but partial destruction, and Attila passed on without waiting to see that it was utterly consumed.
Besançon shared the same fate as Langres; and on the morning after its destruction, Attila gazed from the heights in the neighbourhood, and exclaimed with a glance of triumph, as he beheld no force on any side either to watch his progress or oppose his will, "We are not defeated! Let them write it in their histories, that after a pitched battle, in which five hundred thousand men were slain, Attila rode unrestrained through Gaul, and sacked two of her finest cities before the eyes of Ætius. But they will not write the truth--they will not, they dare not, lest in after ages every boy should spit at their memory. Now we may safely turn our steps towards our native land, lest the winter again set in, as it did when we were coming hither, and bind us with icy chains amid the fastnesses of the mountains."
The direction taken by the army was now towards the east; and leaving Gaul, Attila plunged into the passes of the Jura, pausing from time to time amid the sweet Helvetian valleys, as if he even hoped that the Romans might follow him thither, and once more try the fortune of battle. He who through his life had gone from victory to victory, whose steps had been upon the necks of conquered nations, and whose daily food had been success, had met with a check, had encountered disappointment, had been unsuccessful, if not defeated; and he seemed to thirst for an opportunity of wiping away the only stain, slight as it was, which a thousand battles had left upon his sword. None of his confidence had abandoned him; his reliance on his own mighty genius and daring courage was unshaken; but yet the check received in that undecided battle had wrought a change in Attila, and that change unfavourable. Ever stern and unyielding, he had now become fierce and irascible; nor was that all: many of the vices of the barbarian character, which had been kept down, and, as it were, overawed in his nature by the greater and more splendid qualities, so long as success had attended him, now seemed, like slaves on the first reverse of their master, to rise up turbulently in his bosom, and threaten to usurp the supreme control.
It was remarked, also, that Attila--fearing, perhaps, that his first want of success might have deprived him of some portion of his vast influence over the minds and hearts of his followers--had become suspicious, wily, exacting in regard to outward reverence, occasionally violent, and often intemperate. He assumed, too, a greater degree of pomp and external magnificence; as if the simple splendour of his powerful mind was sufficiently tarnished by the one slight reverse he had met with, to require the substitution of a meaner sort of majesty, to dazzle the eyes where the heart was unsatisfied.
The change, indeed, was not very great in any one particular, but still enough so in each to attract the attention of a person who remarked so closely as Theodore, and, in the aggregate, sufficient to strike the eyes of others. This mood, too, increased in him daily; and, as he marched onward, it drew the attention of Ardaric himself.
Through those wide beautiful valleys, clad in the everlasting green with which a temperate climate and a happy soil has robed them, the Hunnish cavalry wound on, feeding their horses by the banks of the streams and lakes, which, scattered in bright confusion throughout the free Helvetian land, have rendered it, in all ages, a country of enchanted sights. Through those deep passes, too, clad with the fir and pine, whose evergreen garmenture bore no token of the approaching autumn, the long and dusky troops of barbarian horsemen poured on, lifting, with wild enthusiastic delight, to the mountain, the rock, the rugged precipice, the variegated foliage, and all the beauties of uncultivated nature, those eyes which looked with scorn or abhorrence upon all the productions of civilized art, and on the mighty master works of the human mind.