They returned from Gaul by the eastern coast of Italy. Marius had a desire to show Ethne where the city of Aquileia _had been_. The Roman roads along the Adriatic, which had led to the ruined cities of Altinum, Concordia, and Aquileia, still remained, though the cities to which they led had vanished for ever, under the devastations of the Huns. They stood among the charred ruins of Aquileia by the clear stream of the Natiso; and from the abandoned quays of the great commercial port they chartered a vessel from Ravenna to take them thither by the coast. As they sailed along the low shores, they saw a few poor huts on a cluster of islands, with shallow channels between, peopled by fugitives from the ruined cities. They knew not that this cluster of huts would grow into Venice, any more than they could foresee the fiery flood of Moslem invasion from Arabia which Venice was to help to stem. But as they landed and spent a few hours among the refugees in those huts, and listened to their tales of wrong and ruin, and saw their brave battle of resistance with the seas and sands, Ethne, always in sympathy with suffering and toil, felt there a breath of life and hope which she missed afterwards amidst the empty pomp of Imperial Ravenna. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER XXVI. “THE HOLD OF EVERY FOUL SPIRIT,” “I SIT A QUEEN.” It was in the glow of an autumn evening that Ethne and Marius, with their little Paul, the Irish nurse, Dewi and the dog, reached the Aventine, in the autumn of the year of our Lord 454. The welcome of Damaris and Fabricius, especially the mother’s wistful welcome, with an instinctive longing look for some one yet to come who was not there, brought to Ethne’s heart again the warmth of familiar affection and the sense of home. If Damaris had seemed satisfied, as if all were restored by her own return with Marius, Ethne’s own heart would have been less satisfied. It was the mother’s first eager question, “And Lucia, my daughter, my child?” that altogether woke up her heart to life. Her own mother’s heart, Ethne knew, was always asking that question about herself, and in filling as far as possible a daughter’s place to Damaris, she felt as if in some way strengthening Lucia to sustain her own mother in Ireland. One day before long she met Miriam, straying sadly into the Temple of Peace. “You wonder to see a Hebrew woman in this Temple of the Idol,” she said; “but I came to see once more the sacred treasures of our race, and of the Temple of our God, the golden table of the shewbread, the seven-branched candlestick, that once lit up our Holy Place.” “Your Holiest Place was dark and empty, was it not, all the year?” asked Ethne; and then very tenderly she added, “But I believe if you and I could look into the Holy of Holies now in the heavens, we should see it not dark or empty; for One of your race has entered there and abides there always.”