"What dost thou bring?" "Advice: evacuate the town, all the citizens to the Capitol. An express messenger over the Alps for help." "Thou seest spectres!" "Ah! If I saw only _them_! But I see the Germans!" "There is no trace of them far and wide." "It is exactly that which is mysterious. They must be near, quite near; and no one knows where they are." "_Why_ must they be quite near?" "Because the gray heron does not go southwards in the month of June; and because he never flies so low." "What has that to say to it?" "I will tell you. I was making the midnight round to relieve the guard at the Porta Latina. From the battlements of the tower I looked out sharply into the night. Nothing was to be seen, and nothing to be heard, except the song of the nightingale. Then suddenly I heard the cry of the gray heron." "They are not numerous here," said Severus; "but they do appear in the stagnant waters and in the marshes of the Ivarus." "Certainly; but the cry did not come from the river; it sounded on this side of the stream, out of the mountain forest." "Making an eyrie there, perhaps." "It was the _migratory call_. And they migrate in August. And after the first call there was a second, a third, a fourth answer, till the sounds died away in the distance." "The echo from the hills!" "That is conceivable. But the cry did not come from high in the air; it came from below, from the ground, up to me on the battlements of the tower. The heron does not fish at night." The old man smiled pleasantly. "Do, my Cornelius, believe the old huntsman. It fishes at night when it has a brood to feed. I have myself caught one in the morning in the fishing-net which I had set the evening before." "But that arrow was winged with the feathers of the--gray heron. And as often as the heron called, there answered still deeper out of the eastern forest the shrill cry of the black eagle." "Accident! And how could the Germans come here from the east? From the west, from Vindelicia only, could the Alemanni come, who are the nearest Germans to us. How could they have crossed the river unnoticed, unless they have wings, like the gray heron himself? Foresight is very praiseworthy, my young friend, and thou seest I am not wanting in vigilance. But thou art too anxious; youth and age have exchanged their _rôle_, I know," hastened Severus to add, as an angry look flashed across the handsome face of the young man, "I know Cornelius Ambiorix is only anxious for Rome, not for himself." "Why should I be anxious about a life that has no charm and no value?" asked the other, again composed, and sitting down by the old man. "The philosophy of the sceptics has destroyed the old gods for us; and I cannot believe in the Jew of Nazareth. A blind fate guides the world. Rome--my pride, my dream--sinks, sinks irretrievably."