“Yes; but my fate is the fate of ages and of nations,” said Theodora, throwing up her head with that tumult of the brow which he had once before noticed. “Amid the tortures of my spirit at this moment, not the least is that there is only one person I can appeal to, and he is one to whom I have no right to make that appeal.” “If I be that person,” said Lothair, “you have every right, for I am devoted to you.” “Yes; but it is not personal devotion that is the qualification needed. It is not sympathy with me that would authorize such an appeal. It must be sympathy with a cause, and a cause for which, I fear, you do not—perhaps I should say you cannot—feel.” “Why?” said Lothair. “Why should you feel for my fallen country, who are the proudest citizen of the proudest of lands? Why should you feel for its debasing thraldom—you who, in the religious mystification of man, have, at least, the noble privilege of being a Protestant?” “You speak of Rome?” “Yes, of the only thought I have, or ever had. I speak of that country which first impressed upon the world a general and enduring form of masculine virtue; the land of liberty, and law, and eloquence, and military genius, now garrisoned by monks, and governed by a doting priest.” “Everybody must be interested about Rome,” said Lothair. “Rome is the country of the world, and even the doting priest you talk of boasts of two hundred millions of subjects.” “If he were at Avignon again, I should not care for his boasts,” said Theodora. “I do not grudge him his spiritual subjects; I am content to leave his superstition to Time. Time is no longer slow; his scythe mows quickly in this age. But when his debasing creeds are palmed off on man by the authority of our glorious capitol, and the slavery of the human mind is schemed and carried on in the forum, then, if there be real Roman blood left—and I thank my Creator there is much—it is time for it to mount and move,” and she rose and walked up and down the room. “You have had news from Rome?” said Lothair. “I have had news from Rome,” she replied, speaking slowly in a deep voice; and there was a pause. Then Lothair said: “When you have alluded to these matters before, you never spoke of them in a sanguine spirit.” “I have seen the cause triumph,” said Theodora; “the sacred cause of truth, of justice, of national honor. I have sat at the feet of the triumvirate of the Roman Republic; men who, for virtue, and genius, and warlike skill and valor, and every quality that exalts man, were never surpassed in the olden time—no, not by the Catos and the Scipios; and I have seen the blood of my own race poured, like a rich vintage, on the victorious Roman soil; my father fell, who, in stature and in mien, was a god; and, since then, my beautiful brothers, with shapes to enshrine in temples; and I have smiled amid the slaughter of my race, for I believed that Rome was free; and yet all this vanished. How, then, when we talked, could I be sanguine?”