But now a mightier name was on the wind—a wilder terror was abroad—Attila!—Attila—the dread Hun! Still all as yet was peace; and, although rumors were abroad of meetings beyond the Danube; of the bent bow—emblem of instant warfare—sent with the speed of horse o’er moor, morass, and mountain—although the tribute, paid yearly by the degenerate Cæsars, had been refused indignantly by the bold Marcian—bold, and wise, and worthy the best days of the republic!—although from all these tokens prudent men had foreseen the wrath to come, and brave men armed to meet it, and cowards fled before it; still careless and improvident the crowd maintained their usual demeanor, and toiled, and laughed, and bought, and sold, and feasted, and slept sound o’ nights, as though there were no such things on earth as rapine, and revenge, and merciless unmitigated war. It was as sweet and beautiful an evening in the early autumn as ever looked down with bright and cheerful smile from the calm heavens upon man’s hour of rest, what time the labor and the burthen of the day all past and over, he gathers round him his blythe household, and no more dreaming of anxiety or toil or sorrow, looks confidently forward to a secure night and happy morrow. And never did the eye of day, rising or sitting, look down from his height upon a brighter or a happier assemblage than was gathered on that evening in a sweet rural villa, scarce a mile distant from the gates of Singidurum one of the frontier towns of Masia on the Danube. It was a wedding eve—the wedding of two beings both young and beautiful and loving. Julia, the fairest of the province, the bright and noble daughter of its grave proconsul, famed for her charms, her arts, her wit and elegance, even in the great Rome itself before her father had taken on himself—alas! in an evil hour—the duties and the honors of that remote provincial government—and brave Aurelius, the patrician—Aurelius, who, though not yet had he reached his thirtieth summer, had fought in nine pitched battles, besides affairs of posts and skirmishes past counting—won no less than five civic crowns, for the lives saved of Romans on the field, and collars, and horse trappings, and gold bracelets, as numerous as were awarded to the deeds of Marius, when valor was a common virtue in Rome’s martial offspring. They were a noble pair, and beautiful, as noble—well-matched—she, light as the summer cloud and airy as its zephyr and graceful as the vine that waves at every breath—he vigorous and tall as the young oak before the blight of eld has gnarled one giant limb or scathed one wreath of its dark foliage.