“No,” answered the Avar; “he only speaks in case of need. ‘What is the use of standing,’ he asks, ‘and deceiving one another?’ He is a wise man, and not without traces of kindness and humanity. He allows no unnecessary bloodshed, does not avenge himself on a defeated foe, and is ready to forgive.” “Has he any religion? Does he fear death?” “He believes on his sword and his mission, and death is for him only the door to his real home. Therefore he lives here below, as though he were a guest or traveller.” “Quite like the Christians, then?” “It is remarkable that in Rome he received respect from Pope Leo--What’s the matter now?” Outside there was a shouting which at first seemed to issue from the palace, but soon spread itself over the camp. Half a million of men were howling, and it sounded like weeping. The guests hurried out, and saw all the Huns dancing, cutting their faces with knives, and shouting unintelligible words. Edeko came up and pulled Orestes away through the crowds. “Attila is dead! May Jesus Christ be praised!” “Dead? That is Ildico’s doing!” “No! she sat by the corpse, veiled and weeping.” “Yes, it is she.” “Yes, but these savages are too proud to believe that Attila could be killed by a human being!” “How fortunate for us!” “Quick to Rome with the news. The fortune of the man who first brings it is made.” Orestes and Edeko departed the same morning. They never forgot this wedding which had brought them together. Later on they renewed their acquaintance, under other and still more striking circumstances. For the son of Edeko was Odovacer, who defeated the son of Orestes, who was no other than the last Emperor Romulus Augustus. Strangely enough his name was Romulus, as was that of Rome’s first King, and Augustus, as was that of the first Emperor. After his deposition, he closed his life with a pension of six thousand gold pieces, in a Campanian villa, which had formerly belonged to Lucullus. THE SERVANT OF SERVANTS Rome had become a provincial town and a dependency of Byzantium. It was governed by an Exarch in Ravenna, but often abandoned to its fate when the barbarians from the north amused themselves from time to time by raiding and pillaging it. For three hundred years no Emperor had visited Rome, and the former queen of the world lay despised in rubbish and ruin. But presently people began to collect and piece together the ruins of temples and palaces, and build churches out of them. Five hundred years after the death of Nero, an already ancient church of St. Peter stood in the middle of the tyrant’s circus, where the martyrs had suffered death. There were at least seven other churches in different parts of the town, and the Bishop of Rome dwelt in the Lateran Palace, near the church of the same name. There were also convents, and on the Appian Way stood the St. Andrew’s Convent, close to the Church of the Cross, which was built at the entrance to the catacombs.