But far worse than this, the Vandal fleet had borne away into slavery hundreds of the noblest in Rome—men and matrons, youths and maidens. “How did you escape?” Ethne and Damaris asked. “We scarcely know,” Marius said, “unless it was because you were praying, and we were needed here.” “But they said Leo had saved Rome for the second time,” Ethne said. “How can it be said that Rome is saved?” “Rome is still _there_,” Marius replied mournfully, remembering vanished Aquileia, “despoiled indeed, but not destroyed; still a home of the living, still a city, not a heap of ashes and a charnel-house of the dead. And this she owes to Leo. As to us, our lives at least are saved; and if life is still worth anything to him, we have saved the poor old Jew and his noble wife. For he _is_ poor, without pretence, at last, and she _is_ noble.” “How did you save him? and what from?” Ethne asked. “His precious hoard was all but his death,” Marius replied; “those ferrets of Vandals wrung out of him where it was hidden. I found him hung up by the wrists in his own upper chamber, the ropes cutting through to his poor old bones; they were threatening other tortures, and his wife was kneeling vainly imploring them to have pity on his grey hairs. At that moment, hearing cries of distress, I happened to come in, and I reminded the brigands of the promise made by their king Genseric to Leo, not to torture their captives or to slaughter the unresisting. ‘But this old fellow is not unresisting,’ they said; ‘he refuses to show us the hoards we know he has here, close at hand.’ ‘What hoards can a hunted, persecuted old exile like me have?’ moaned the Jew. The Vandals laughed, and strained the cords tighter. The old man writhed, but would not give any information as to the coveted hoard. If it had been a sacred trust he was defending he would have been a hero; if a religious faith, a martyr. “Then Miriam, unable to bear any longer seeing him thus tortured, whispered to me, and pointed to a corner of the room, where the hoard had been built in. The old man’s eyes flashed fire, and he denied what she said; but the plunderers knocked at the wall, found that it rang hollow, broke into it, and greeted the shower of gold and silver that rattled down on the floor with peals of mocking laughter. Again I reminded them of the promise of mercy to Leo. The chief agreed. “‘All fair, the secret is out,’ he said. ‘We have the treasure, and that is torture enough for the old miser.’ And at his command they cut the cords and let the victim down. “He fell in a helpless heap on the floor, all hope and courage crushed out of him, and wept and sobbed like a child. If it had been wife and child for whom he had suffered any one must have wept with him.” “It _was_ wife and child and country to him,” Ethne murmured; “it was the double glamour which bewildered him—the hideous curse of Mammon and the fond dream of affection. But what of Miriam?”