The gates were kept carefully shut. When the news first reached the Capitol, Leo, the Tribune, had sprung from his couch, "To horse!" cried he; "out, before the walls!" But with a cry of pain he had sunk back in the arms of his slave; and he did not wish to entrust to another the dangerous enterprise of a nightly reconnaissance outside the gates, against an enemy certainly far superior in numbers. Severus, the commander of the volunteers in the town, had only infantry at his disposal. With these alone, he could not and would not advance against the barbarians in the night. He contented himself with occupying the towers and gates. The strengthened guard on the ramparts watched and listened attentively in the mild night air; but there was nothing unusual to be observed, no light in the neighbourhood, no camp-fires in the distance, which the advancing Germans, with wives and children, men-servants and maidens, with herds, carts and waggons, certainly could not dispense with, and which it was not their custom to extinguish either from prudence or fear. No noise was heard, neither the clang of arms, nor the hoof-strokes of horses; only the regular, gentle murmuring of the stream, which hastened through the valley from south to north, struck on the ears of the watchers. A burgher once thought he heard a noise in the direction of the river, like the gentle neighing of a horse, and a splash of the waves, as if a heavy body had fallen or sprung into the stream; but he convinced himself that he had been deceived, for everything remained still as before. The nightingales sang in the bushes around the villas; their undisturbed song testified, as one rightly judged, that neither waggons, horses, nor warriors were in movement there. So to gain information they turned again to the corpse of the horseman, and to his steed, yet trembling in every limb.