“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?