"Then it is true," said Attila, rising, "and we must scourge him back into Gaul. Attila marches for Milan. I leave you, my friend, to tread upon Verona and Padua, and to sweep the plains behind me of all adversaries. Leave nothing dangerous behind, and follow with all speed. Where are Ardaric and Valamir? They must accompany me this night!" and with a slow and deliberate step he left the tent, giving no sign of emotion of any kind, unless his leaving Ildica without a word, or even a look, might be construed into a proof of how much the tidings he had just heard affected him at heart.
Ildica lifted her eyes to heaven, and clasped her hands, exclaiming, "Oh God, thou dost not desert me in my utmost need! On thee will I rely!" and, with a heart relieved, she burst into a long but happy flood of tears.
"To Milan!" she thought--"to Milan! That is far off. Ætius, too, is before him. Ere I shall see his face again, Theodore will have returned, and I shall be delivered!" and again she wept. Her attendants flocked around her; and some seeing her state, without knowing why, mingled their tears with hers.
"Weep not, my friends," she said at length--"weep not! I weep for joy! Leave me alone for a while; and give me the ivory scrinium with the silver clasps. There is a book therein I would fain read to tranquillize my mind."
The attendants obeyed; and bringing her the casket which she had mentioned, set it down beside her and retired. Ildica opened the scrinium, and, from among a number of rolls of parchment and papyrus, selected a manuscript in vellum, gathered together into the form of two or three small volumes, and pored eagerly upon the pages, seeming to find there matter for deep meditation and solemn interest. Now, her eye ran rapidly over the lines, and her hand turned the pages without pause; and then again she would suddenly stop, and looking up, as if for light and direction, would think for several minutes over what she had just read, as if the sense were doubtful, or the precept difficult of application. But the book was one which, in every age since first its words were traced upon that page of light, has caused, and well might cause, the mind of man to lose itself in lofty musings. It was the book which to the eye of the inspired patriarch of old was shown, in the vision of those heavenly steps by which the angels of God came down to earth, and ascended back again on high. It was the book which leads the soul, step by step, from the thoughts of earth, and the common and familiar things which the mind of man can grasp, up to those wide and sublime regions where, standing at the footstool of the Almighty throne, we still gaze up on high, and thought loses itself in the boundless space of mercy, power, and wisdom. It was that book, down each gradation of which angels and prophets came to visit earth, and lead back into heaven the just, the humble, and the true.
There, as she read, the eye might see the history of that sacred Being during his short stay on earth, whose life was mercy and purity; whose words were wisdom and holiness; whose birth and whose death were equally miraculous and beneficent, an example, a teacher, a guide, a sacrifice, an atonement. There, too, as her eye ran back over the long record, which marks the preservation of the revealed knowledge of our God, holy, and true, and wise, throughout ages and among nations, corrupt, perverse, unfaithful, the eye might trace the simple, touching story of the early fathers of mankind, and see displayed in the candid words of Divine truth their thoughts, their errors, and their virtues, without a shade of palliation or excuse. There lay revealed the mighty trial of Abraham's triumphant faith; there, the sweet history of Joseph and his little brother; there, the tale of Ruth, and of the widow and her son, and the mighty faults and virtues of Israel's psalmist king; there, his son's instructive wisdom and monitory fall; there, all those affecting scenes which, in their grand simplicity, defy the brightest eloquence of every people and of every time, to move the heart of man as they do.
But it was not on such scenes that the eye of Ildica principally rested. She sought for matters more assimilating with her fate and fortunes at the time. She read of the battles of the chosen people of God, their wars, their victories, their reverses. She paused, and thought upon the history of Sisera and Jael; but oh, how her heart thrilled when she read the tale of the tyrant warrior, from whom a woman's hand delivered the people of the Lord! She read! she trembled! she gasped for breath! She laid down the book and wept aloud!
Oh let us leave the secret feelings of her heart to commune with themselves undisclosed! for who can say what those feelings were, how deep, how sad, how terrible? Who can tell them all perfectly, who can display the struggle, and the mingling, and the strife, wherein a thousand opposing thoughts, and hopes, and fears, bright sympathies, noble aspirations, lofty purposes, and mighty inspirations, together with woman's shrinking modesty, intense love, and tender nature, contended like hostile nations bent on mutual destruction within the narrow battle-field of that fair, beautiful bosom? Who can tell them all? and, if not all, should we trifle with a part? Oh no, no! we have said enough!