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.