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computer information systems and accounting as well as a Master of Arts in adult
and continuing education.
• ISBN-10 : 9781337102124
• ISBN-13 : 978-1337102124
Table contents:
CHAPTER 1: An Introduction to Visual Studio 2017 and Visual Basic
FOCUS ON THE CONCEPTS LESSON
F-1 Computer Programming Terminology?
F-2 The Programmer’s Job
F-3 The Visual Basic Programming Language?
F-4 The Visual Studio IDE?
F-5 Assigning Names to Objects
Apply the Concepts Lesson
A-1 Start and Configure Visual Studio Community 2017
A-2 Create a Windows Forms Application?
A-3 Manage the Windows in the IDE
A-4 Change a Form File’s Name
A-5 Change the Properties of a Form
The Name Property
The Font Property
The MaximizeBox, StartPosition, and Text Properties
A-6 Save a Solution
A-7 Close and Open a Solution
A-8 Add a Control to a Form
A-9 Use the Format Menu?
A-10 Lock the Controls on the Form??
A-11 Start and End an Application?
A-12 Enter Code and Comments in the Code Editor Window
The Me.Close() Statement
Assignment Statements and Comments
A-13 Print an Application’s Code and Interface
A-14 Exit Visual Studio and Run an Executable File
Summary
Key Terms
Review Questions
Exercises
CHAPTER 2: Planning Applications and Designing Interfaces
FOCUS ON THE CONCEPTS LESSON
F-1 Planning a Windows Forms Application
F-2 Windows Standards for Interfaces
Guidelines for Identifying Labels and Buttons
Guidelines for Including Graphics
Guidelines for Selecting Fonts
Guidelines for Using Color
F-3 Access Keys
F-4 Tab Order
Apply the Concepts Lesson
A-1 Create a Planning Chart for a Windows Forms Application
A-2 Design an Interface Using the Windows Standards
A-3 Add a Label Control to the Form
A-4 Add a Text Box to the Form
A-5 Set the Tab Order
Summary
Key Terms
Review Questions
Exercises
CHAPTER 3: Coding with Variables, Named Constants, and Calculations
FOCUS ON THE CONCEPTS LESSON
F-1 Pseudocode and Flowcharts
F-2 Main Memory of a Computer
F-3 Variables
Selecting an Appropriate Data Type
Selecting an Appropriate Name
Examples of Variable Declaration Statements
F-4 TryParse Method
F-5 Arithmetic Expressions
F-6 Assigning a Value to an Existing Variable
F-7 ToString Method
F-8 Option Statements
F-9 Named Constants
Apply the Concepts Lesson
A-1 Determine a Memory Location’s Scope and Lifetime
A-2 Use Procedure-Level Variables
A-3 Use Procedure-Level Named Constants
A-4 Use a Class-Level Variable
A-5 Use a Static Variable
A-6 Use a Class-Level Named Constant
A-7 Professionalize Your Application’s Interface
Coding the TextChanged Event Procedure
Coding the Enter Event Procedure
Summary
Key Terms
Review Questions
Exercises
CHAPTER 4: The Selection Structure
FOCUS ON THE CONCEPTS LESSON
F-1 Selection Structures
F-2 If…Then…Else Statement
F-3 Comparison Operators
Comparison Operator Example: Total Due Application
Comparison Operator Example: Net Income/Loss Application
F-4 Logical Operators
Logical Operator Example: Gross Pay Calculator Application
F-5 Summary of Operators
F-6 String Comparisons
String Comparison Example: Shipping Application
F-7 Nested Selection Structures
F-8 Multiple-Alternative Selection Structures
F-9 Select Case Statement
Specifying a Range of Values in a Case Clause
Apply the Concepts Lesson
A-1 Add a Check Box to a Form
A-2 Code an Interface That Contains Check Boxes
CheckBox’s CheckedChanged Event
A-3 Add a Radio Button to a Form
A-4 Code an Interface That Contains Radio Buttons
RadioButton’s CheckedChanged Event
Using the Select Case Statement with Radio Buttons
A-5 Group Objects Using a Group Box Control
A-6 Professionalize Your Application’s Interface
Coding a Text Box’s KeyPress Event Procedure
A-7 Professionalize Your Code Using Arithmetic Assignment Operators
Summary
Key Terms
Review Questions
Exercises
CHAPTER 5: The Repetition Structure
FOCUS ON THE CONCEPTS LESSON
F-1 Repetition Structures
F-2 Do…Loop Statement (Pretest Loop)
F-3 String Concatenation
F-4 Infinite Loops
F-5 Do…Loop Statement (Posttest Loop)
F-6 Counters and Accumulators
F-7 For…Next Statement
Comparing the For…Next and Do…Loop Statements
Flowcharting a For…Next Loop
Apply the Concepts Lesson
A-1 Use a Loop, a Counter, and an Accumulator
A Different Version of the Projected Sales Application
A-2 Add a List Box to a Form
Using the String Collection Editor to Add Items to a List Box
The Sorted Property
The SelectedItem and SelectedIndex Properties
The SelectedValueChanged and SelectedIndexChanged Events
A-3 Use the Methods and a Property of the Items Collection
Count Property
Clearing the Items from a List Box
A-4 Calculate a Periodic Payment
ListBox, Loop, and Financial.Pmt Example: Monthly Payment Application
A-5 Nest Repetition Structures
Nested Repetition Structure Example: Savings Account Application
A Caution About Real Numbers
A-6 Professionalize Your Application’s Interface
Summary
Key Terms
Review Questions
Exercises
CHAPTER 6: Sub and Function Procedures
FOCUS ON THE CONCEPTS LESSON
F-1 Event-Handling Sub Procedures
F-2 Independent Sub Procedures
No Parameters/Arguments Example: History Grade Application
F-3 Passing Information to a Procedure
Passing Variables by Value Example: Gross Pay Application
Passing Variables by Reference Example: Concert Tickets Application
F-4 Rounding Numbers
F-5 Function Procedures
Apply the Concepts Lesson
A-1 Add a Combo Box to the Form
A-2 Add Items to a Combo Box and Select a Default Item
A-3 Code a Combo Box’s KeyPress Event Procedure
A-4 Create an Event-Handling Sub Procedure
A-5 Calculate Federal Withholding Tax
A-6 Invoke an Independent Sub Procedure and a Function
A-7 Create an Independent Sub Procedure
A-8 Create a Function
A-9 Validate an Application’s Code
A-10 Professionalize Your Application’s Interface
Summary
Key Terms
Review Questions
Exercises
CHAPTER 7: String Manipulation
FOCUS ON THE CONCEPTS LESSON
F-1 Length Property
The Product ID Application
F-2 Insert Method
F-3 PadLeft and PadRight Methods
The Net Pay Application
F-4 Contains and IndexOf Methods
The City and State Application
F-5 Substring Method
The Rearrange Name Application
F-6 Character Array
The First Name Application
F-7 Remove Method
F-8 Trim, TrimStart, and TrimEnd Methods
The Tax Calculator Application
F-9 Replace Method
F-10 Like Operator
Inventory Application
Apply the Concepts Lesson
A-1 Code the Check Digit Application
A-2 Code the Password Application
A-3 Generate Random Integers
A-4 Code the Guess a Letter Application
Use the Enabled Property and Focus Method
A-5 Code the Guess the Word Game Application
Coding the btnNewWord_Click Procedure
Coding the btnTryLetter_Click Procedure
Summary
Key Terms
Review Questions
Exercises
CHAPTER 8: Arrays
FOCUS ON THE CONCEPTS LESSON
F-1 Arrays
F-2 Declaring One-Dimensional Arrays
Storing Data in a One-Dimensional Array
Determining the Number of Elements in a One-Dimensional Array
Determining the Highest Subscript in a One-Dimensional Array
Traversing a One-Dimensional Array
F-3 For Each...Next Statement
F-4 Calculating the Average Array Value
F-5 Finding the Highest Array Value
F-6 Sorting a One-Dimensional Array
F-7 Two-Dimensional Arrays
Declaring a Two-Dimensional Array
Storing Data in a Two-Dimensional Array
Determining the Highest Subscript in a Two-Dimensional Array
Traversing a Two-Dimensional Array
Totaling the Values Stored in a Two-Dimensional Array
Apply the Concepts Lesson
A-1 Associate an Array with a Collection
A-2 Create Accumulator and Counter Arrays
A-3 Create Parallel One-Dimensional Arrays
A-4 Search a Two-Dimensional Array
Summary
Key Terms
Review Questions
Exercises
CHAPTER 9: Sequential Access Files and Menus
FOCUS ON THE CONCEPTS LESSON
F-1 Sequential Access Files
F-2 Sequential Access Output Files
Output File Example: Game Show Application
F-3 Sequential Access Input Files
ReadToEnd Method Example: Game Show Application
ReadLine Method Example: Game Show Application
Apply the Concepts Lesson
A-1 Add a Menu to a Form
GUI Guidelines for Menus
Menu Example: Continents Application
A-2 Code the Items on a Menu
A-3 Modify a Menu
A-4 Accumulate the Values Stored in a File
A-5 Sort the Data Contained in a File
A-6 Professionalize Your Application’s Interface
Summary
Key Terms
Review Questions
Exercises
CHAPTER 10: Classes and Objects
FOCUS ON THE CONCEPTS LESSON
F-1 Object-Oriented Programming
F-2 Creating a Class
F-3 Instantiating an Object
F-4 Attributes Section of a Class
Attributes Section Example: Franklin Decks Application
F-5 Behaviors Section of a Class
Constructors
Methods Other than Constructors
Behaviors Section Example: Franklin Decks Application
Using the Rectangle Class: Franklin Decks Application
F-6 Adding a Parameterized Constructor to a Class
F-7 Reusing a Class
Apply the Concepts Lesson
A-1 Use a ReadOnly Property
A-2 Create Auto-Implemented Properties
A-3 Overload Methods
Summary
Key Terms
Review Questions
Exercises
CHAPTER 11: SQL Server Databases
FOCUS ON THE CONCEPTS LESSON
F-1 Basic Database Terminology
F-2 Creating a SQL Server Database
F-3 Adding a Table to a Database
F-4 Adding Records to a Table
F-5 Data Source Configuration Wizard
F-6 Binding the Objects in a Dataset
Having the Computer Create a Bound Control
F-7 DataGridView Control
F-8 Copy to Output Directory Property
F-9 Try...Catch Statement
F-10 Two-Table Databases
Relating the Tables
Creating a Database Query
Displaying the Query Information
Apply the Concepts Lesson
A-1 Create a Data Form
A-2 Bind Field Objects to Existing Controls
A-3 Perform Calculations on the Fields in a Dataset
Summary
Key Terms
Review Questions
Exercises
CHAPTER 12: Database Queries with SQL
FOCUS ON THE CONCEPTS LESSON
F-1 SELECT Statement
F-2 Creating a Query
F-3 Parameter Queries
F-4 Saving a Query
F-5 Invoking a Query from Code
Apply the Concepts Lesson
A-1 Add a Calculated Field to a Dataset
A-2 Use the SQL Aggregate Functions
A-3 Professionalize Your Application’s Interface
Summary
Key Terms
Review Questions
Exercises
CHAPTER 13: Web Site Applications
FOCUS ON THE CONCEPTS LESSON
F-1 Basic Web Terminology
F-2 Creating a Web Site Application
F-3 Starting a Web Application
F-4 Modifying the Site.master Page
F-5 Personalizing the Default.aspx Page
F-6 Personalizing the About.aspx Page
F-7 Testing with Different Browsers
F-8 Closing and Opening a Web Site Application
Apply the Concepts Lesson
A-1 Repurpose an Existing Web Page
A-2 Add a Table and Controls to a Web Page
A-3 Code a Control on a Web Page
A-4 Use a Validation Control
Summary
Key Terms
Review Questions
Exercises
APPENDIX A: GUI Design Guidelines
APPENDIX B: Additional Topics
APPENDIX C: Finding and Fixing Program Errors
APPENDIX D: Visual Basic 2017 Cheat Sheet
APPENDIX E: Case Projects
Index
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queen of the Adriatic; too near the hordes of the Huns. Aetius, the
great general, the Count of Italy, seemed to fail them. The foremost
place which he obtained for himself by basely betraying his great
rival Boniface, Count of Africa, had proved no post of ease or real
power to him. The feeble Emperor himself had become his rival,
using him (as was afterwards terribly proved) not a moment longer
than the hour of danger lasted. Boniface was dead; Africa, through
his treachery, was lost to the Empire, to civilization, and, as it was
proved afterwards, to Christianity; and Italy lay bare to the foe. He
himself had become the dread and detestation of the weak and
wicked court, and now it seemed as if a palsy had fallen on his own
strong will and clear intellect; it was rumoured that Aetius was
counselling the Emperor that they should take flight together and
abandon Rome to her fate.
Only Leo was left. But Leo stood firm, a rock of strength because
he stood on the Rock. Still his protecting presence and his words of
power were there—“Christ Himself has not abandoned the care of
His beloved flock.”
“Throughout the universal Church Peter is still saying day by day,
‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God;’ and every tongue
which confesses the Lord is clothed with the majesty of this voice.
This faith overcomes the devil and dissolves the fetters of his
captives; those who are torn away from the world it engrafts into
heaven, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it.”
And from day to day, in those days of earthquakes and storms,
went up the prayer for ever associated with Leo’s name and with this
great conflict—
“Grant, O Lord, we beseech Thee, that the course of this world
may be so peaceably ordered by Thy governance, that Thy Church
may serve Thee in all godly quietness, through Jesus Christ our
Lord.”
Never could the world have seemed less peaceably ordered than
then; yet it was indeed not under the governance of Valentinian, or
of Aetius, or of Peter, but of God. Never could there have been less
external quiet; but the Church, and Leo, kept the “godly quietness”
within, in the presence of God. Never could the waves have seemed
more likely to overwhelm the Rock than then; but it stood firm as
ever. “Our fathers all ate the same spiritual meat, and all drank the
same spiritual drink, for they drank of that spiritual Rock that
followed them, and that Rock was Christ.”
And again from every basilica and every house rose Leo’s prayer
—“Grant us the spirit to think and do always such things as be
rightful, that we who cannot do anything that is good without Thee,
may by Thee be enabled to live according to Thy Will.” Leo’s prayers
were indeed fulfilled for him in the way his inmost soul desired. Of
Leo personally scarcely a trace is left, as to the persons he loved,
the life he lived, the death he died; his only monument, the rescue
of his Rome, and the Rock of the great Apostle’s great confession of
the Christ, on which he stood, and which he held for the Church.
Sorely indeed were the strong words of consolation needed in the
household on the Aventine. No further sound reached them from
Aquileia, no record of individual heroism or deliverance. What voice
indeed could come from ashes and a charnel-house?
The fame of only one act seemed borne above that raging storm
of murder and rapine; only one name was borne to them through
the death-silence that succeeded. It was reported that the good and
beautiful young matron Digna, the friend of their house and of
Marius, had covered her head like a Roman matron of old, and from
the tower on the walls adjoining her house had plunged into the
glassy waters of the Natiso which flowed deep and strong below, to
escape the insults of the Huns.
When these tidings reached them, for the first time Damaris
uttered a cry of despair. “Alas! alas!” she said, “too surely our Marius
is slain, or he would have saved her.”
But Fabricius shook his head.
 “Fond mother’s thought! Against such a flood of furious savagery
Marius would have been as powerless as when he lay a babe in thine
arms;” and then, with a flash of the old patrician fire, he added, “It
is not Digna only, it is our old Rome, who chose death rather than
dishonour at Aquileia; our Rome has fallen, she is dead, but never
could she have perished save by suicide. Our vices have killed us.
Yet she has fallen fighting to the last, not as a slave and captive, but
as free and the mother of the free. The brave garrison of Aquileia
could not save our Rome from ruin, but they have saved it from the
worst dishonour; Digna stands for ever as a symbol of her great old
glory. And Marius, thank God, our Marius was there!”
But with those words the old man broke down; and the father and
mother wept together.
 CHAPTER XIX.
LEO AND ATTILA—THE RESCUE OF ROME.

adly and slowly after that the terrible days and weeks
passed on. The great festivals of the Church were over.
The daily festival of the perpetual Eucharist indeed went
on with its ceaseless pleading of Redeeming death, and
ceaseless participation of the ever-renewing Life, its
blending of triumph and of tender tears, “Pretium et poculum,” for
ever.
And day and night in Ethne’s heart Patrick’s hymn still made
melody—
“Christ in the fort; Christ on the sea; Christ above, beneath,
around, within, for ever.”
For in Ethne’s heart alone nothing could quench the hope that
Marius would yet return.
Still came in, day after day, the tidings of mourning, lamentation,
and woe. The long resistance of Aquileia had enraged the Huns to
madness; and her capture and destruction had apparently awakened
in them an insatiable thirst for blood and ruin. For the time even
plunder seemed subordinate to mere wild waste and ravage. Week
by week came the cry of cities sacked and burned and laid waste for
ever; Concordia, thirty miles from Aquileia, and Altinum.
Then followed another phase of horror. The mere blind fury of
revenge seemed at last assuaged; and the hideous savage hordes
entered on another stage of devastation; the lust of plunder and of
drunken orgies seemed to revive and gain the upper hand. The rich
plains of Lombardy had been laid waste, the flourishing cities of the
coast had been blotted from the earth, and now the great cities of
the interior, Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, Pavia, and finally
Milan, appalled by the fate of Aquileia, opened their gates, and from
these came the tidings how the Huns, “bacchabantur,” were holding
hideous revels and orgies there night and day. Meanwhile Rome
herself had virtually no walls to defend, no gates to open. Rome,
with her temples and palaces, each as a city within itself, lay
absolutely defenceless and bare before the Tartar hordes.
The thunder-cloud drew nearer and nearer, and more and more
the Aventine household realized their utter helplessness. It was
reported that Aetius was on the point of taking flight with the
Emperor. But still Leo stood firm, still the prayers went up from the
basilicas. More and more the mother, the sister, and the bride
seemed to find themselves most at home in the ancient churches of
the catacombs, by the tombs of the martyrs of the early days, as the
darkness deepened around them; until, at last, faint rumours began
to creep into the city, of debate and division in the camp of Attila
himself. The spell of Rome began to work; too much, his chieftains
began to feel, was staked on the life of one man. The last royal life
that had braved the great enchantress, the great queen City, had
paid the penalty of victory by death. If Attila were to fall as Alaric
had fallen, some began dimly to feel, who would hold his unwieldy
empire, his hordes of many divided tribes, together? Moreover, the
inevitable curse of polygamy was in Attila’s own house. Which of all
the sons of his many wives would win the allegiance of these
disorganized hosts? The great defeat and slaughter of the previous
year, the Hunnenschlacht, on the plains of Châlons, could not have
been forgotten; and something stronger than defeat in battle was
doubtless beginning to dissolve the terrific forces of dissolution from
within. Cruelty and lust and violence cannot create or unite; man
remains human through all; and the avenging of such crimes must
eventually grow out of the crimes themselves. No inspiring loyalty,
no sacred memories or hopes, no great purpose of patriotism or
even of conquest, held that vast horde together; nothing but only
that one gigantic will. And if Attila hurled his life against Rome and
conquered, and fell, like Alaric, what would become of his Huns?
Probably, moreover, this hesitation and division of purpose began to
invade the heart and will even of Attila himself.
At length the echo of these debates and divisions penetrated
faintly to Rome itself, and vague suggestions began to be made of
sending an embassy to Attila himself, entreating peace.
But if such an embassy were possible, who would risk themselves
to be the ambassadors? Ambassadors had been sent before to Attila
from the Eastern empire with a secret mission of assassination, and
he had discovered it; and the ambassadors had barely escaped,
through a rare generosity, with their lives. Who would venture on
such an embassy from the Western empire, with such a memory of
treachery confronting them? It was no mission for a soldier,—a
message of abject submission and supplication;—yet to venture on it
demanded more courage than any battle-field.
There could have been but one name on the lips and in the hearts
of all, the name of the man whom Rome had waited for those forty
days so many years before to make him her leader and bishop.
There was not a hope but in Leo; not a man besides who could be
trusted with such a mission, or would undertake it.
And Leo did not fail. He went; and with him two distinguished
civilians—Avienus, once a consul, and Tregetius, a prefect, to
propitiate Attila by two high official names,—mere names then, and
long since, forgotten names, save as adjuncts to Leo. In this
embassy, once more the names of the Emperor, “the Senate and
People of Rome,” were united, not in a decree but a supplication; the
parody of a People and Emperor and the shadow of a Senate. But
the ambassador was a true Roman and a Christian, a genuine man
and a living saint. And Attila had shown that he recognized a true
man when he encountered him, and would listen to a saint when he
saw him.
Silent among the silent multitudes the three veiled women,
Damaris, Lucia, and Ethne, watched the procession leave the
northern gate and wind along the plain. They felt in their inmost
souls the depth of humiliation symbolized: an entreaty from the
Imperial city for mercy from a Tartar savage; an appeal from the
Christian Church for compassion from a heathen destroyer, the
symbol of whose worship was a scimitar planted hilt downward in
the earth. But in reality they all felt the appeal of Leo was from man
to God, from princes in their vanity and nothingness “to the Lord of
those who rule, and the King of those who reign.”
Thus once more a Roman was found to throw himself into the
chasm for the salvation of Rome.
The suppliant embassy went northward to the camp of Attila in
Lombardy, to the place where the Po and the Mincio meet; and the
multitudes of Rome dispersed again to their various forms of labour
or idleness, some of them no doubt, like the little company on the
Aventine, to the basilicas or quiet oratories to pray the great prayer
of Christendom, and the prayers of Leo himself, and to wait.
They had not long to wait. Attila’s movements were not slow, nor
his decisions vacillating. He saw Leo and believed in him. But what
can any of us say as to the Presence he felt in Leo, or round about
Leo? Legend has told and Raphael has painted in his immortal
picture, that he saw the apostles Peter and Paul hovering about Leo
in the air, as the champions of Rome, and that Attila and his Huns
cowered in terror before the heavenly vision. Prosper, Leo’s own
secretary, tells us simply that Leo “committed himself to God, Who
never fails to aid the labours of those who trust Him; nor did less
ensue than his faith expected.” Leo, no doubt, would scarcely have
been surprised at the apparition of St. Peter and St. Paul; he
certainly believed that the honour and primacy of his See belonged
to Peter and not to himself. But always, above and beyond Peter, Leo
beheld Christ, “never relinquishing the care of His beloved flock.” In
that Presence he lived, and more than once we know Attila had
recognized that mysterious, supernatural Presence in saintly men.
The spell of Rome may indeed have been upon him, and the
superstitious dread of the terrible tendency to revulsions in the
affairs of men, which haunts the high places of the world; perhaps
also some natural qualms of conscience for the miseries inflicted on
myriads of human creatures, some echo in his heart, which was still
human, of the cries of tortured men and wronged women and
innocent babes. All this probably wrought for Leo, and also the
kinship one great man feels for another; the weight of a spirit
accustomed to rule, the force of that “saving common-sense” which
often has a persuasiveness stronger than genius, and was the
genius of Leo.
But it was something mightier than all this, we may be sure, which
conquered Attila. The very best and deepest in us all, however
seldom it is reached, is after all the strongest. It was the very
deepest depths in Leo, the depths over which broods the living Spirit
of God, that met the depths of Attila, and moved him irresistibly “to
think and to do the thing that was rightful,” to conquer his own evil
will, and spare Rome.
Rumour says that he veiled his surrender in a grim humour which
was natural to him, saying, “I can fight with men, but the wolf and
the lion (Lupus and Leo) are too much for me.”
But whatever the motive, surrender was made. The vast host from
the eastern wilds turned back again eastward, never more to sweep
in devastating floods over the West; and Leo returned in peace to
the Rome he had saved.
Rome, at all events, did not receive her deliverer as Troyes had
received the Bishop to whom she owed her existence. To the great
city which he had defended when abandoned by all her natural
defenders, Leo became thenceforth Rock and Refuge, Chief
Shepherd, Supreme Ruler, Father, Pope. Thenceforth Rome and her
Pope were identified. The magic of her old Imperial name was
transferred to him; the granite of his ancient Roman character
guarded her. Leo spoke “to the City”; the city still spoke, as no other
voice could speak, to the world. The “ad Urbem” and “ad Orbem”
were thenceforth not to be dissociated.
 We do not hear of any pomp and ovation to do him homage on his
return. The city was saved; but the salvation was from a humiliation
only possible through the degradation and corruption of the city
itself. And this moral degradation continued.
 CHAPTER XX.
AMONG THE HUNS—LEO AND ATTILA.

ut in the midst of the tide of universal rejoicing (as in the

midst of the malaria of almost universal corruption), one
little fresh spring of pure and tender joy had burst forth
for the household on the Aventine. The ocean tide might
and did ebb back from high-water mark; but when it
receded, a little fountain of sweet fresh water was found welling up
from other depths below earth and sea, as sometimes on the shores
of our western seas.
Slowly, with the uncertain gait of one toiling up from the ravine of
the shadow of death, Marius was creeping up the Aventine, almost
spent with fatigue. Ethne saw him first from the terrace above the
gardens. In a moment she was at his side, and they were climbing
the hill together, those two who were thenceforth to make their
uphill journey together all the way.
For a moment he clasped her to his heart.
“It is through thee I am here,” he said, “through thee that I ever
came back at all. It is thou who hast given me back my life.”
She could only murmur a few words of Patrick’s hymn, and then,
“I always knew He would bring thee back;” and again accepting her
support for his feeble steps, they moved on till he reached the
familiar portico with her.
That evening little more could be said. That “he was there,” as one
raised from the dead, and that “He Who brought him back was
there,” with them all, always, to the end, was for the hearts of all
“gladness so complete,” that no more could be poured in.
 The welcome, the peace of home, the love, old and new, and at
last the falling asleep, watched by his mother’s eyes, as when he
was a child, wrought wonders in one night. In the evening scarcely
any eyes but those of the love that had never ceased expecting him
could have recognized him, with the feeble gait, the hollow eyes, the
worn, pale cheek. In the morning the soul had visibly taken her
place on the throne again, and he was himself. Still the careful
nurses rigidly insisted on rest, until by the next day he had gathered
strength to tell his story.
“I was in the tower in Aquileia with the Lady Digna,” he began.
“The yells of the victorious Huns were all around us, closer and
closer up the steps. When she sprang from the tower into the river,
something like madness seized me, as doubtless it had seized her,
and I sprang after her, with some wild hope of saving her. I sank and
then rose, and seemed to grasp her robe, and swam, keeping
desperate hold of it, and then clutched something with one hand,
which may have been a post for fastening boats to on the other side
of the river. Then something struck my head, whether a javelin from
the Huns or the strong current dashing me against the point of rock
I know not. I could only cry, ‘Christe Domine, miserere nobis!’ Then I
became unconscious, and when I awoke in the night, hours
afterwards, I was stretched on the opposite bank of the river, alone.”
“Then thy ‘Miserere’ may have been the last sound on her dying
ear?” said Damaris.
“I know not,” he replied. “At all events, the mercy for which I
cried, the Christ on Whom I called, was there, and not uncaring or
asleep.”
After a pause he went on—
“I was alone. It was night, but the river and all the land around
were lit up by the flames of the burning city. And the silence of night
was broken by exulting yells of vengeance, by cries of agony and
vain entreaty, and, worse almost than all, by the hideous laughter of
bacchanalian orgies.
 “Something must have wounded me, for my head and hands were
bleeding, and I was faint with loss of blood. But I contrived to creep
under the shelter of an empty cattle-shed in the desolate fields; and
there I lay, I know not how long—lay there,” he continued, turning
to Ethne, “until I was saved through thee.
“A poor woman of the Huns was gathering sticks for a fire, and
seeing me lying there, seeming, I suppose, at the point of death,
she had compassion on me. She went and brought me food and
drink; and then in broken Latin, such as the barbarian tribes who
settle on our frontiers learn to speak, she said, ‘A Roman woman
saved my son. I will save thee.’ Her son was a brother of the dying
boy beside whom I saw thee first at Orleans. The brother was
among the wounded Huns left in the city when the siege was raised,
one of those enemies whom Bishop Anianus desired the Christian
women to succour, and thee among them. By degrees, as she
tended me, the whole story came out; and, from her description, it
could have been no one but thyself who hadst also ministered to the
brother of the boy who died with his hand in thine. She was a
woman of some consideration among the Huns. I should hardly have
been spared but for her pleading. They had at that time no use for
captive slaves, to carry about and feed, and no spark of mercy for
Roman soldiers; although I think those of us who shared in the
defence of Aquileia, when once the first deadly rage of vengeance
was assuaged in blood, were held even by them in a kind of rough
honour. Again and again I heard men among them say, ‘If all Roman
cities had been like Aquileia we should never have been here; but
we and Rome might have been not foes but friends.’
“Also,” Marius continued, turning to his mother, “I told her of thee,
and,” with a lowered voice to Ethne, “of thee and our betrothal, and
that touched her heart. As my strength returned, I was able to be of
some service to her, and she insisted on bringing me to the notice of
her king, Attila himself. It was perilous, for he has frightful streaks of
savage fierceness and haughtiness, not blending, but violently
jarring, with occasional vibrations of affection and kindliness, and
flashes of grim humour and wit, all crude and unmixed, so that you
can never tell which you will find uppermost. Moreover, as you all
know now, he has a wonderful keen eye and a genuine honour for
truth, the truth of which he has had so little experience amongst us.
And I suppose he felt in some way that I was true. So it happened
that I was much about his court and in his presence, and saw
strange and unexpected things in Attila and in his Huns. For you
were right, mother,” he went on, “there are no ‘half beasts’ in the
creation of God, though, alas! there are half devils, fallen as the
original devils of old. And you were right,” he added, looking at
Ethne; “if all the Christians Attila had met had been saints, indeed
had been ordinarily good or true, who can say what Attila might
have become?
“He has a royal contempt for mere tinsel and glitter. While his
courtiers prank themselves in the borrowed splendours of the
vanquished, he still wears his old Scythian skins and tanned leather.
While they emulate the banquets of the Imperial court, he lives on
the simplest, roughest food. It is said he never eats bread, but only
meat, and that often half raw.”
“An independence of cookery which scarcely disproves his likeness
to the beasts,” interposed Fabricius, with a grave smile; to which
Marius made no retort.
“I saw Attila among his sons,” he said, “at a banquet,
accompanied by wild music, with panegyrics on him and his
victorious warriors and chiefs, no doubt as harmonious and
satisfactory to the Huns as the strains of Greece or the rhetoric of
our Sidonius Apollinaris to our Emperor. But Attila did not seem to
heed them. All the time his heart and thoughts seemed set on a
young lad, his youngest son, as he kept caressing his curly hair with
his hand, and jesting with the child who will, he hopes, succeed him.
“And then came the strange, grotesque pomp of his enthronement
in the Imperial palace at Milan, the palace from which Constantine
issued the edict proclaiming Christianity the religion of the Empire,
and where the great Theodosius listened to Ambrose.
 “There is a painting on the palace walls which greatly offended
Attila, representing the Scythian (or some barbarian) chieftains
crouching in homage (and some of them stretched vanquished and
slain) before the two golden thrones of the two Emperors of the East
and West. As an expiation he commanded a Roman or Greek artist,
not to paint this picture out, but, leaving it to satirize to itself, to
paint opposite to it another picture representing the two Emperors of
East and West, laden with sacks full of the gold coin of the tribute to
the Huns, humbly emptying them at the feet of Attila. Happily for
me, my mother, I have not the genius of thy forefathers, and could
not paint; otherwise a difficult dilemma might have been set before
me. But all the time I was in the camp of the Huns, and at the court
of Attila, I could not but observe an uneasiness and uncertainty and
vague dread ever growing and gathering over the rude warriors, and
even over Attila himself. They seemed satiated with slaughter, and in
some dim way under a spell, afraid of losing their plunder, afraid of
the avenging power of the civilization they were ruining, afraid of the
ancient names of Italy and Rome, haunted by the fate of Alaric, our
Rome’s last conqueror. Not a few of the bravest even ventured to
suggest that the host should return beyond the Danube to enjoy
their spoils and employ the captives they had already won.
“And then,” he concluded, “as you all know, came the embassy
from suppliant Rome. Every ambition of Attila’s for the recognition of
his power and glory was gratified in this appeal for mercy from the
humbled Empire, from the helpless City which had so long been
mistress of the nations. Leo was at the head of the procession,
simple and stately, representative of the great Christian Church.
“Never to my dying day can I forget that confronting of the
worshippers of the scimitar, the conquerors by force, and the disciple
of the Crucified, the conqueror by the Cross;—one more great
incident in the long warfare between the forces of division and of
peace, of good and evil, as real as that in which ‘Satan as lightning
fell from heaven,’ and perhaps not more silent.
 “On one side the great barbaric host of the mighty king who had
conquered and devastated Europe from the Euxine to the Baltic, in
all its savage pomp and pride; on the other, the little company of
peace-makers, led by our Leo, his tall, slight figure arrayed in the
pontifical robes, his abundant silvery hair flowing down from
beneath the silken, gold-embroidered mitre, the purple chasuble, the
pallium with the small red cross on the shoulder and the large red
cross on the breast, Roman courage and dignity blended with sacred
majesty in his look and bearing. For some minutes there was a hush
of expectation and suspense; then followed the brief speech
between Attila and Leo. What was said has not been told. Some
report, as no doubt you have heard, that Attila said he could fight
with men, but not with the wolf and the lion (Lupus and Leo). But I
believe and am sure that, whatever he said, Attila felt he was face to
face with a courage nobler than his own, with a Power to save
mightier than his to destroy—felt indeed that he could fight with
men, but not with God.
“And so it was that Leo won the day. The countless hosts of the
destroyers went back with Attila to their own place among their
wildernesses; the little embassy of the peace-makers went back with
Leo to Rome. And Rome is saved.”
 CHAPTER XXI.
ON THE SABINE HILLS.

t was not many days after the rescue of Rome from the
Huns by Leo that Baithene came back from Ireland. He
found the city full of noise and stir, the people crowding
to the Circensian games; the Coliseum echoing to the
shouts of the spectators of the chariot races, athletic
games, and dramatic performances.
Rome had not indeed received her deliverer as for a time
misguided Troyes had received the Bishop who had risked his life for
her. But her response to the great gift of her rescue was far from
satisfactory to Leo.
When Baithene reached the Aventine, he found the family absent
in the basilica, at the Festival of St. Peter and St. Paul. He followed
them thither, and through the betrothal veils recognized Ethne and
Lucia, with Damaris, Fabricius, and Marius. And resounding through
the lofty pillared spaces, once more he heard the voice of Leo in
grave warning and remonstrance.
“The religious devotion, beloved,” he said, in deep and mournful
tones, “with which, at the time of our chastening and our liberation,
all the people of the faithful flowed together to render thanks to God
in acts of praise was soon neglected by almost all. This has given
sore pain to my heart, and has also smitten it with fear. For the peril
is great when men are ungrateful to God, and by their forgetfulness
of His benefits show that they neither feel compunction at reproof,
nor rejoice in their remission and pardon. Therefore, beloved, I
dread lest this voice of the prophet should be applicable to us—‘I
have scourged them and they have not mourned, they would not
accept correction’; for how can correction have been accepted by
hearts so turned away? It shames me to say it, but it is necessary
not to be silent; more is rendered to demons than to apostles, and
insane spectacles are more frequented than the shrines of the
martyrs. Who has restored this city to safety? Who has rescued her
from captivity? Who has defended her from slaughter? Is it the
games of the circus? or is it the care of the saints, through which the
sentence of Divine condemnation was softened, so that we who had
deserved wrath might be preserved for pardon?
“I beseech you, let this saying of the Saviour touch your hearts,
Who, when by His might and His compassion He had cleansed ten
lepers, observed that only one of them came back to give thanks;
signifying that those ungrateful ones, although by an act of pity they
had obtained health of body, retained, through their impiety, disease
in their souls. Lest such a sentence should be pronounced, beloved,
on you, turn ye back and consider, and understand the wonderful
things that He has deigned to accomplish for us; that, no longer
attributing our liberation (as some impious ones have done) to the
operation of the stars, but to the unspeakable mercy of Almighty
God, Who deigned to soften the hearts of the furious barbarians, we
may unite together in full vigour of faith in the commemoration of
such a benefit. Grave negligence must be remedied by testimonies
of gratitude all the greater.” Then tenderly reminding them of the
sufferings of the saints and martyrs, Peter and Paul, whom they
were commemorating, he commended them to the mercy of God
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
It was in the porch of the basilica, as the congregation dispersed,
that the family of the Aventine first met again. When they reached
the gardens of the palace, and sat in the shade of the ilexes, there
was much to hear and tell. From Ireland the tidings were full of joy.
The Irish chieftain, on hearing of the welcome of his son and
daughter in the Christian household at Rome, had laid aside his last
faint hesitation as to embracing Christianity, and had been baptized
by Patrick at the great Easter Baptism. He and his wife welcomed
Lucia to their hearts and kingdom; they trusted to receive her as a
daughter in the place of the daughter they were willing to give as a
bride to Marius, however sore the parting might be to them. They
only stipulated that, as soon as might be in those perilous days, the
four might come back to Ireland; Baithene and Lucia to remain as
the joy of their home, and the stay and strength of the clan; and
Ethne and Marius to sojourn there as long as they could be spared
from their Roman home. Also they desired that Baithene should for a
time take a fair dwelling of his own in Rome, to receive his sister
there, that she might be led thence, as became a lady of free and
noble birth, to the house of her bridegroom. And they consented,
they even generously wished, for the sake of their own country and
people, that Baithene and Lucia should remain a year or two in
Rome, that he might bring home to their far-off Ireland the learning
and training of that great city, which they understood to have been
so long the centre of the world’s greatness and wisdom, and the
channel of Divine wisdom and order to the Christian Church.
Thus in the midst of that tumultuous, tormented age, began one
of those quiet melodies of love and rest which are always flowing on
in soft musical tones through the din of storms and wars, scarcely
heard at all in the great orchestral chorus of history, yet without
which the world itself, and therefore its history, would soon fall back
into chaos and cease to be.
First came the betrothal. Fabricius and Damaris kept to ancient
customs as far as might be, Damaris leaning to the rites of her
Greek forefathers, and both of them to the customs of those early
Greek Christians of Rome, to whom the Greek inscriptions of more
than two centuries in the catacombs bore witness. The ceremonies
of the veiling and the ring were therefore celebrated at the
betrothal, which took place in the Oratory of the Ecclesia Domestica
on the Aventine. There also were given the dowry by the fathers of
the brides, the Irish chieftain and Fabricius, with the “Arrhae,” or
pledge in money; there also the hands of the betrothed were joined,
the sacred kiss given, and the ring placed on the hand of the bride,
a signet ring, in token that she should henceforth seal and have
charge of her husband’s property; and there, finally, they received
the solemn benediction of the priest. Afterwards the betrothed
separated, Lucia returning to her father’s house, and Ethne going
with Baithene to a country house belonging to Fabricius, among the
Sabine hills, high amidst the wooded mountains above the town of
Subiaco.
This separation was considered as especially important in their
case, in order to efface all traces of captivity and bondage; that the
marriage might be recognized as between those who always had
been and were for ever free men and free women. For so deep and
enduring was the degradation stamped legally and socially on the
slave, that there had been a prolonged contest, scarcely yet decided,
whether marriage between slaves was to be treated as legal
marriage at all; whilst marriage between a free woman and a slave
was regarded as in a sense a crime; and marriage between a free
man and a slave woman was liable to be annulled at any moment. It
was therefore arranged that the forty days between the betrothal
and the marriage festival, customarily spent together by the
betrothed apart from each other, should be spent together by the
brother and sister in the villa on the Sabine hills.
To Ethne, and indeed to both of them, those days were like a
fresh baptism into childhood. The long year of humiliation and
terrible suspense was over; to their unspeakable joy their father had
become a Christian; and their parents in Ireland were content. Bright
visions of re-union with his people were before Baithene; and before
Ethne hope of a life of noble service with him to whom her heart
was given. But she was to devote these weeks to the dear
companion of all her past life, in an island of rest between the past
and the future, in the midst of the voyage of life.
As the great Roman thoroughfare, the Via Valeria, branched off
into the narrower road along the banks of the Anio, and climbed up
the mountains by Sublaqueum and the Roman villa of Nero, her
spirits rose at every step. As they passed picturesque village after
village perched for safety on the crests of the hills, or plunged
deeper and deeper into the mountains and among the luxuriant
forests, her whole spirit seemed to rise and breathe the bracing air
of the heights. The country house was comparatively simple; the
decorations and conveniences of the villa of the Roman noble, hot
and cold baths, halls and corridors with mosaic floors, and quiet
inner chambers, were there; but the corridor in front was like a
trellised rustic pergola, with the vines clustering around the pillars. It
opened on a terrace from which there was immediate access to the
free wild hills. Baithene, from his long residence there with Fabricius,
was familiar with it all, at home with the place and the people; his
many acts of care and kindness had won for them both an
enthusiastic welcome, which almost made the brother and sister feel
as if they were amongst the men and women of their own clan; they
were understood, beloved, and honoured there, and free to do what
they would, and go whither they would, without restraint.
Baithene knew all the mountain paths, and it was their delight to
climb crag after crag with feet nimble as the wild goat’s, to gaze
from the heights across fold after fold of the great range of the
Apennines, or over the lower hills to the far-off plains and the sea.
But most of all, Ethne’s delight was in the fountains and streams, the
springs bubbling up on the hill-sides, and pouring out their crystal
waters from under the crags.
“We have come once more from the aqueducts to the fountains,”
she said; “the waters are no more imprisoned and enslaved in rigid
stone channels, they are free. And we are free,” she added, “free to
go forth like them, and make the world glad, and to minister freely
to its humblest needs.”
For they were indeed in a land of fountains and brooks, which run
among valleys and hills; the Aqua Marcia, and the Aqua Claudia, and
the Fons Ceruleus of heavenly blue, the crystal springs which fed the
waters of the great Claudian aqueduct, kept perennially full the
magnificent fountains of Rome, and sparkled in Constantine’s
porphyry basins in the great baptistery of the Lateran.
Many a gracious kindness they found means and opportunities of
doing to the peasantry, and the dull, cowed expression on many of
the faces was for them transfigured into a trusting smile of welcome.
The heavy, universal shadow of slavery weighed indeed on all the
toilers; yet a hope dawned on Ethne of penetrating it with the light
of Christian redemption and human brotherhood. Thus for the most
part those happy days were for both of them a bathing of body,
soul, and spirit in the fountain of youth, in the beauty and strength
and freedom of nature.
“I was a glad and sunny child,
And in the Fount of Life,
Which, gushing from its hidden cave,
In many a clear and sparkling wave,
Each with sweet music rife,
Wells in the morning sunlight up
E’en to its stony brim,
Dropping into each flowery cup
That trembles on the rim;
Each joyous chime and merry burst,
As fresh and glad as ’twere the first,
I bathed and quenched my healthy thirst
Until my heart grew wild.
And in the still and sultry hours,
When nature drooped and was sad,
Weary with thirst and heat,
The tread of my light feet,
Was cool and musical,
As when at evening fall
Drop by drop in lonely pools the summer showers,
And the desert looked up and was glad.
I strove with the maddened storm,
I leapt the crag with the water-fall;
For the blood in my veins was warm,
And storms and streams and gleams and all
The mighty creatures of the wild,
In their wild, exulting play
They welcomed me to their company,
And they laughed to see a human child
As strong and as glad as they.”
 CHAPTER XXII.
A MEETING OF THE WATERS.

t last the day of the nuptials came. Before dawn Ethne

and Baithene started with the lectica and the cavalcade,
and pausing once on the way, at last reached the great
basilica of the Lateran. There the party from the
Aventine met them, and Marius himself wondered at the
fresh power and beauty in Ethne’s face, the radiant glow, the shining
of the happy eyes. The sadness and the worn, weary look had
indeed passed out of his own face, but still he felt as if the weight of
the ages rested on him in comparison with her.
“It is the old world wedding the new,” he said to her with a tender
gravity.
“I have been among the fountains,” she said; “we are going there
together.”
“You are my fountain of youth,” he answered; “I need no other.”
The Bishop and the priests met and received them at the porch,
and they entered the great basilica; it was crowded. Bishop Leo
himself was to give the benediction, and the rank of the betrothed,
the romance of the foreign, far-off origin of Ethne and Baithene, the
story of their sorrows and their joys, had gathered a great company
together, touched with a sympathy unusually real and deep.
The white and purple veil was folded by the Bishop himself around
the bride; at the close of the ceremony he solemnly joined the hands
of bride and bridegroom, laid his own hands on their heads, and
then through the vast spaces of Constantine’s basilica, in his grave,
deep tones sounded the benediction—“O God, Who by Thy mighty
power hast made all things out of nothing, Who, after other things
set in order, didst appoint that out of man created in Thine own
image and similitude woman should take her beginning, teaching
that it should never be lawful to put asunder those whom Thou
hadst pleased should be created out of one! O God, Who hast
consecrated the state of matrimony to such an excellent mystery (or
sacrament), that in it Thou didst typify the sacrament (or mystery)
of Christ and the Church! O God, by Whom woman is joined to man,
and so blessed a union was instituted at the beginning, as not to be
destroyed even by the judgment of the Flood, look mercifully upon
this Thy servant now to be joined in wedlock, who seeks to be
defended by Thy protection. May there be on her the yoke of love
and peace; may she be a faithful and chaste wife in Christ, and may
she continue a follower of holy women; may she be lovable to her
husband as Rachel, wise as Rebecca, long-lived and faithful as
Sarah. May she strengthen her weakness by the help of discipline;
may she be modest, grave, bashful, and instructed in godly learning;
and may she see her sons’ sons to the third and fourth generation;
and may she reach the rest of the blessed in the Kingdom of
Heaven.”
As the last act of the ceremonial, the Bishop placed on the head of
Ethne a golden crown, of Greek workmanship, and on that of Lucia a
golden diadem, delicately wrought with fine Celtic art. Ethne would
rather have chosen a crown of flowers, but the gold was considered
an honour due to her birth, as for Lucia it was a token of the rank
Baithene was able to offer her.
And so with pomp and music the bridal company were conducted
to the old palace on the Aventine. When they were alone together,
Damaris blessed her son and Baithene according to the old Greek
form of her people—“The servant of the Lord is crowned for the sake
of the handmaid of the Lord, in the name of the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Ghost.”
And afterwards to her daughter and Ethne she said—“The
handmaid of the Lord is crowned for the sake of the servant of the
Lord.” Then embracing them with tears, she said the ancient words
—“With glory and honour didst Thou crown them, Thou hast placed
a crown of precious stones upon their heads;” and she added in her
own words with a radiant smile—“These golden crowns, beloved, will
be offered in a few days on the altar in the church, but ye shall be a
crown of joy to each other for ever.”
Afterwards she gave a little sealed packet to Ethne. It contained a
precious jewelled clasp of oriental workmanship from Miriam, with
the words from the old Hebrew marriage ritual written in Latin
folded round it—“Make these two to rejoice with joy according to the
joyousness which Thou gavest to the work of Thy hands in the
Garden of Eden of old.”
Before long Ethne and Marius went away to the country house,
now so dear and familiar to her, amongst the Sabine hills; whilst
Baithene and Lucia remained to be the son and daughter of Fabricius
and Damaris in the old palace on the Aventine.
 CHAPTER XXIII.
FULFILMENTS AND DREAMS ON THE SABINE
HILLS.

hus Ethne went back to be the light and joy of the home
among the mountains, which had grown so familiar to
her; but she came with a new light and a new joy. The
gaiety and buoyancy of her race, and the free,
imaginative delight in nature were still there, but there
was added the tender grace of matronhood; the old world and the
new, the sunset and the dawn, had blended; the weight of the cares
of that old world of Marius were on her, as the power of her new
hope was on him.
“It is conjugium,” they said, “no mere (contubernium) dwelling
together, but working under a yoke together; His yoke which is
fruitful, His burden which makes us run the swifter, as ‘the burden of
wings to a bird, or sails to a ship.’”
For always the burden of this universal slavery, which was
crushing the Roman world, weighed on Ethne; denying as it did the
sanctity of married life to the toiling many, and making unholy life so
terribly easy to the luxurious few; degrading all, in fact, to one level
of evil, because virtually rejecting the sacred equality of a common
humanity. The Christian Church had indeed begun her long battle
with this evil as with all others; but to Ethne, coming from a social
life of another kind, entangled no doubt with its own difficulties and
wrongs, but not debased with these, it seemed as if the way made
hitherto through all these centuries of Christianity was very little.
“It was written so long ago,” she said, “that tender letter of Paul
the Apostle interceding for a runaway slave. Not even a good slave,
but ‘unprofitable.’ Yet the great Apostle calls him ‘My own son in the
faith,’ and says to his master—‘Receive him not as a slave, but a
brother beloved.’ To the master, think, four hundred years ago! And
what master acknowledges this now?”
“Scarcely even our own Leo,” Marius said. “Does not this perplex
thee in Leo?”
“Why should it?” she said. “Does not Leo himself say to God
continually, ‘We can do nothing good without Thee’? I suppose if he
finds by and by that he has made a mistake, he will say in his
humility, as he would say now if he saw it, ‘I must have done that
without Thee.’ Besides, beloved, it is not so easy, I know, for him or
for you, or for any of us, even to ‘think the thing that is rightful,’
much less to do it.”
“What indeed can we do?” he said. “To emancipate the slaves
would be to doom them to starvation, unprotected, disorganized,
helpless, degraded.”
“We must be Christian,” she said, with her victorious smile, “and
let the rest follow! We must love them, worship with them, believe in
the image of God in them, however defaced; in the brotherhood of
Christ with them, however unrecognized. He is sure to conquer in
the end. And He is sure to give us our bit of His battle to fight.”
One day of their wanderings together among the mountains
remained stamped for ever on Ethne’s heart. The dusk was falling on
the valleys, but on a crest of the mountains above them, a temple of
the ancient gods (Marius believed of Apollo) shone golden in the
evening light. A little company of mountain folk were moving slowly
towards the portals, bearing a lamb garlanded for sacrifice. After a
time they reappeared, and a strain of wild, weird music wound in
and out, echoing among the hills. Heathen rites were indeed still
practised there, and forbidden worship was still offered, which would
not have been ventured on in less remote places. At the same time,
below, on the other side, on the top of a low hill near them, Ethne
saw a rude uncouth wooden cross, like a gibbet, standing alone,
stretching out its arms; a ghastly horror confronting the beautiful
marble temple on the height.
At the foot of that uncouth cross knelt a man, clothed in rough
dark garments, with a sheepskin capote, such as was worn by the
shepherds of the region. But as they drew nearer Ethne saw that his
head was tonsured. His arms were clasped around the cross. Ethne
and Marius stopped beside him and reverently bowed their heads.
They felt in a sacred place.
“Patibulum crucis, the gibbet of the cross!” Marius said in a low
voice, quoting a well-known Ambrosian hymn. “The legend in the
country is, that this cross is the last left of a multitude on which the
vanquished slaves of one of the terrible Servile Wars were crucified
ages ago. The cross, you know, was a punishment only awarded to a
slave.”
Ethne’s whole face quivered, and tears streamed from her eyes.
As they stood there speechless, the kneeling figure arose.
Approaching them, and seeing Ethne weeping, the stranger said,
looking up at the cross, “Lady, dost thou understand?”
She could not speak. She had indeed understood too keenly. Then
a radiant joy shone from the stranger’s face, and looking up at the
pagan temple glistening on the opposite height, with a slight accent
which they recognized as Greek—
“This will conquer that,” he said; and looking down on a fetter on
one of his wrists, he added, “will conquer that and this. I also have
been a slave.”
“No longer a slave,” she murmured, taking his hard, wrinkled,
aged hand in hers, “a brother beloved!”
“Thou dost indeed understand!” he replied, in a tremulous voice.
“But how couldst thou have known? I also was a runaway slave. I
was in one of the stateliest and most wicked households in Rome;
myself among the worst there,—only a child in years, but old in
degradation and sin,—when one memorable day, at the games in the
Coliseum, in the arena suddenly appeared that unknown monk from
the Egyptian deserts, and tried to stop the combat, and was listened
to for a moment, and then crushed to death beneath the shower of
stones. But he saved Rome from that iniquity for ever, and he saved
me! The vision of that sacrifice of pity haunted me night and day,
until I fled from that den of iniquity—fled hither to the Cross, to the
Christ, for ever.”
And without another word he left them, and vanished among the
rocks.
“Was it an angel of God?” Ethne said, when he was gone.
“An angel of God to us at all events, my beloved,” Marius replied,
as they walked slowly homeward.
Those were, moreover, to Ethne, months of much happy learning
of many things. Still in many ways a child of the wilderness, it was a
constant joy to her to learn through Marius the secrets of his ancient
world. And above all, she delighted, with ever-increasing wonder
and joy, in drinking with him of what to her, lover of all fountains,
was the new and perennial fountain of “the Testaments of God.”
“Freedom, law, life: order, beauty, truth: everything is there,” she
would say. “My own people at home cannot indeed taste of all the
riches of your learning. But they can have, they will have, through
Patrick they have this, the best of all!”
In another of these walks among the deepest recesses of the hills,
they came on a little cluster of dwellings which had a different look
from those around. Flocks of sheep were feeding high up on the
sweet mountain pastures, and a boy and girl were watching them.
At the door of the farm buildings stood a young woman, with a fine
expressive face and large dark eyes, and, beside her, her husband,
an athletic, soldierly-looking man, apparently some years older than
his wife. They greeted Ethne and Marius with a frank equal greeting,
very different from the shrinking or sullen look common among the
slave labourers. There was something in the young wife’s face which
greatly attracted Ethne, and seemed familiar to her in a way she
could not account for. When they passed the farm she said to Marius
—
“Those people seem more like our own upper clansmen at home
than any others I have seen here. Who are they?”
“The man was a centurion,” he replied. “After one of the late
Eastern wars, he left the army and retired here to his father’s lands.
His mother is said to be of Gothic birth, and his wife comes of some
Eastern race. I believe his father was of ancient Sabine descent, as
ancient as our own. Would to heaven there were more such! I think
then Rome need not fear the Goths!”
“Are they Christians?” Ethne asked.
“They are,” he replied. “Christians, it is said, from the days of
Nero.”
Thus the months passed swiftly on in a deep calm flow of peace
and love; whilst meantime Baithene was devoting himself with
single-hearted earnestness to learning everything of art or science,
of handicraft or state-craft, of law or literature, that would be of use
to his people.
Before long a tragic echo from the world outside did indeed break
in on this sunny calm.
The year after the retreat of the Huns from Italy and rescued
Rome, came the news how, at one more of his numerous nuptials,
with a beautiful young maiden called Ildico (a name which seemed a
suspicious echo of some Gothic word enfeebled by Latin lips), on the
day after the wedding, after waiting until late in the afternoon, at
last the attendants ventured in to see what their master might
require, and found him stretched on his face on the bed, quite dead,
the blood which had streamed from his face staining the ground
below; while the bride sat weeping beside him, closely veiled, and
speechless.
No explanation was ever made as to how it happened: if by the
hands of the young bride, no vengeance seems to have followed; if
as the result of the hard drinking at the wedding feast, this did not
lessen the lamentations of his people. For them indeed all their long
career of victory and plunder ended with the life of their chief. His
Tartar horsemen wheeled with wild lamentations around his bier. He
was buried in secret, and the captives and slaves who laid him
beneath the earth were killed when their work was done, that none
might ever violate his grave. No man knoweth of his tomb to this
day; and his empire crumbled into dust with its founder.
The death of Attila did indeed remove a great weight of dread
from the wretched Imperial court and from the falling Empire. It
remained to be seen whether, after all, it would prove to have been
only the lifting off of a weight which had crushed the crumbling
State for the moment into some semblance of consolidation.
Soon after the tidings reached Marius and Ethne on their mountain
heights, he missed her from his side, and found her kneeling in her
chamber weeping bitterly.
“I know the relief it is to Rome and the world,” she said. “I did not
want thee to see me in tears; but I could not help weeping for that
poor heathen king. If only he had met a few more Christians like
Lupus and our Leo, who knows but the heart of the beast might
have gone out of him, and he might have become a man again. For
he was born a human babe of a human mother.”
Marius said nothing, but drew her out among the hills and streams
to soothe and comfort her. Their way that day lay by a road they did
not often take, by the ruins of the magnificent villa of Nero, below
the artificial lakes, into which he had gathered the waters from the
hills. The lakes were still there, crystal clear from the fountains,
heavenly blue under that Italian sky, or steeped in depths of varied
colour from the reflections of the craggy steeps and wooded slopes
around them.
As they stood there Ethne said—
“If only we Christians had remained what the martyrdoms of Nero
made us in that awful night at Rome, torches to illuminate the city
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