Furious at being denied, enraged with his people, and perhaps most of all with himself, the Hun was about to pass on as Alaric had done in spite of the danger which was greater far now than in the time of the Goth, when one evening, so it is said, as he moodily rode within sight of the walls and towers of his inaccessible prey after the heat of the day he saw by chance a stork preparing to leave her nest on one of the towers of the great city, and to fly with her young into the country. In this he saw an assurance of victory. On the morrow once more he hounded his Huns to the assault: and no man since that day has found even the ruins of Aquileia.[14] It was not defeat, it was extermination, complete pillage, and fire. So horrible were the cruelties there committed that they can only be compared with what the Germans have done, and in our day, in Belgium. History records the fate of a young and beautiful woman, Dougna by name, who, pursued by a band of Huns, wrapped her head in her veil and flung herself from the walls into the Natiso. The fall of Aquileia, the extermination of its inhabitants and the horrors that were committed terrorised all Venetia. It was the Prussian doctrine of “frightfulness” carried out with as little scruple as, though more excuse than, that we have seen at work with so great an amazement, and rage, and disgust here in the West upon the body of our Godchild Belgium. Attila marched on; Altinum and Concordia suffered the same fate; they too disappear from the pages of history; Padua and Modena were ravaged and burnt. Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, Milan and Pavia opened their gates, they were but spoiled, their inhabitants exchanged death for slavery. In that long night such as might flee fled away doubtless demanding of God whither they should go. God led them to the lagoons. That Attila thought he was already victorious when he looked on his ruins as Kaiser Wilhelm did when his “heart bled for Louvain” (blood from a stone indeed!) an incident twice recorded by Suidas bears witness. It seems that in Milan, among the mural decorations of the palace, was one representing two Roman Emperors enthroned and clothed in the purple with certain Barbarians, Huns or Scythians, prostrate, demanding mercy at their feet. This work Attila ordered to be effaced and in its stead to be painted one in which he himself sat enthroned, while before him the two Roman Emperors poured gold from great sacks which they bore on their backs. A witty, if brutal jest; futile, too, since along the Po still flashed the eagles of Aetius and already over the Alps came the rumour of the armies of Byzantium.