As long as the rout and the pursuit were confined by the narrow sides of the ascent to Azimantium, he kept that one spot in view; but afterwards, when the path of the flyers opened out upon the plains, the horse which bore it carried it away from his straining eyes, while the gray falling of the evening gave every distant thing a vague, shadowy, uncertain form, like the objects of the past seen through the twilight memory of many years.--He followed it to the last--night fell, and it was lost. With triumph and with song the children of Azimantium wound up towards the city. Joy! joy! joy! was in their hearts and victory upon their brows. They had overcome the myriads, they had conquered the invincible! they had rolled back the barbarian torrent from the gates of their glad city, and every step that they took among the unburied dead of the enemy, told they had won for themselves both victory and peace. With a quick step, but with a cast-down eye and a knitted brow, Menenius, the hero of the triumph, followed the path up the hill. Every voice was glad, every heart seemed joyful, but his; but there was a fear, a dread, a conviction in his bosom, that his was the home that had been plundered of its treasure, his was the hearth to be for ever desolate. He strode on to the town, and joy and glory hailed him; and gratitude and admiration proclaimed his name to the skies. They called him the deliverer of his country, the saviour of his native place--they saluted him as victor--they acknowledged him as chief. "Honoria?" he asked, "Honoria?" but no one answered. Honoria was gone. Since the entrance of the Huns into the city, Honoria had not been seen; and casting himself down upon a couch, he hid his eyes in cloak, while gladness and rejoicing filled the midnight air, and all Azimantium was one high festival. 'Twas strange, 'twas wonderfully strange! that one small city of the greatest empire in the world--while an inundation of barbarians poured over the land--while fortress and town were cast down and levelled with the earth--while legions fled dismayed, and nations bowed the head--and while the very suburbs of Constantinople, the imperial city, beheld the fearful faces of the Huns,--'twas strange, 'twas wonderfully strange, that one small city should stand in its solitary freedom, bold, fearless, and unconquered. 'Twas strange, 'twas wonderfully strange! Yet the deeds of the children of Azimantium are recorded in an immortal page, wherein we read, that "they attacked in frequent and successful sallies, the troops of the Huns, who gradually declined their dangerous neighbourhood; they rescued from their hands the spoil and the captives, and recruited their domestic force by the voluntary association of fugitives and deserters."[20] --------------- [Footnote 20: Gibbon.] ---------------