“She has been accused of breach of her vows, and condemned by the Augustus, as Chief Priest—” in a lower tone, hardly above a whisper, “unheard in her defence.”
“I must go to her.”
“You must not. Nothing can save her. Pray for a speedy death.”
With glazed eyes, with a surging in her ears, and throbbing in the temples—as in some paralyzing nightmare—Domitia looked on.
And now the gag was removed, and with dignity the Great Mother of the Vestals descended from the bier. She stood, tall and with nobility in her aspect, and looked round on the crowd, then down into the moat, at the black hole under the roots of the wall.
“Citizens, by the sacred fire of Vesta, I swear I am innocent of the charge laid against me, and for which I am sentenced. No witnesses have been called. I have not been suffered to offer any defence. I knew not, citizens, until I was told that I was sentenced, that any accusation had been trumped up against me. Thou, O Eternal God—above all lights in the firmament, Thou, O Sovereign Justice that holdest true balances—I invoke Thee—I summon the Chief Pontiff who has sentenced me, before your just thrones, to answer for what is done unto me this day. I summon him for midnight three days hence.”
Then the deputy of the Chief Pontiff, who presided at the execution, Domitian being absent at Albanum (he being Pontifex Maximus), raised his arms to heaven in silent prayer.
His prayer ended, he extended his hand to Cornelia, but she refusing his help, unaided descended into the fosse.
The vast concourse was as though turned to stone by a magician’s wand—so immovable was it and so hushed. Some swallows swept screaming along the moat, and their shrill cries sent a shudder through the entire concourse, wrought to such a tension, that even the note of the birds was an intolerable addition.
The Vestal reached the mouth of the pit—the ends of a ladder could be seen at the threshold of this opening. It was evident that the opening gave access to a vault of some depth.