"Then many will become soft and pious, forget that which is on earth, and strive for that which is beyond the grave. But that neither you nor I can do. I love the earth, with mountain and wood and meadow and rushing stream; and I love life, with all its hate and long love, its tenacious anger and dumb pride. Of the ethereal life in the wind-clouds which is taught by the Christian priests, I know, and will know, nothing. But there is one possession--when all else is gone--which a true man never loses. Look at me. I am a leafless trunk. I have lost all that rejoiced my life; my wife is dead long since; my sons, my grandchildren are dead: except one, who is worse than dead--who has become an Italian. "All, all are gone, and now my first love and last pride, my great King, descends tired into his grave. What keeps me still alive? What gives me still courage and will? What drives _me_, an old man, up to this mountain in this night of storm like a youth? What glows beneath my icy beard with pure love, with stubborn pride, and with defiant sorrow? What but the impulse that lies indestructible in our blood, the deep impulsion and attraction to my people, the glowing and all-powerful love of the race that is called Goth; that speaks the noble, sweet, and homely tongue of my parents! This love of race remains like a sacrificial fire in the heart, when all other flames are extinguished; this is the highest sentiment of the human heart; the strongest power in the human soul, true to the death and invincible!" The old man had spoken with enthusiasm--his hair floated on the wind--he stood like an old priest of the Huns amongst the young men, who clenched their hands upon their weapons. At last Teja spoke: "Thou art in the right; these flames still glow when all else is spent. They burn in thee--in us--perhaps in a hundred other hearts amongst our brothers; but can this save a whole people? No! And can these fires seize the mass, the thousands, the hundred thousands?" "They can, my son, they can! Thanks to the gods, that they can!--Hear me. It is now five-and-forty years ago that we Goths, many hundred thousands, were shut up with our wives and children in the ravines of the Hæmus. We were in the greatest need. "The King's brother had been beaten and killed in a treacherous attack by the Greeks, and all the provisions that he was to bring to us were lost. We lay in the rocky ravines and suffered such hunger, that we cooked grass and leather. Behind us rose the inaccessible precipices; before, and to the left of us, the sea; to the right, in a narrow pass, lay the enemy, threefold our number. Many thousands of us were destroyed by famine or the hardships of the winter; twenty times had we vainly tried to break through the pass.