"Lord of the world! Lord of the world!" exclaimed a voice that hurried from the chambers beyond, "thy daughter is dead in the arms of her maidens; and dying, she sent thee word, that sooner than forbear to slay her enemies, she had drunk of the cup which she had mingled for them."
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Attila smote his breast. "She was my daughter," he exclaimed, "she was, indeed, my daughter! But let her die, for she has brought a stain upon the hospitality of her father; and the world will say that Attila, though bold, was faithless."
There was woe in Azimantium, while with slow and solemn pomp, the ashes of Honoria and Menenius were borne into the city.
In the face of the assembled people, the deputies of Attila, by oath and imprecation, purified their lord from the fate of the lovers. The tale was simple, and soon told, and the children of Azimantium believed.
Days, and years, and centuries, rolled by, and a race of weak and effeminate monarchs; living alone by the feebleness and barbarism of their enemies, took care that Azimantium should not long remain as a monument of reproach to their degenerate baseness. Nation followed nation; dynasty succeeded dynasty; a change came over the earth and its inhabitants, and Azimantium was no more. Still, however, the rock on which it stood bears its bold front towards the stormy sky, with the same aspect of courageous daring wherewith its children encountered the tempest of the Huns.
A few ruins, too--rifted walls, and dark fragments of fallen fanes--the pavement of some sweet domestic hearth, long cold--a graceful capital, or a broken statue, still tell that a city has been there; and through the country round about, the wild and scattered peasantry, still in the song, and the tale, and the vague tradition, preserve in various shapes, The Story of Azimantium!