In every sally, in every irruption made by the Azimantines into the vast tract of country now covered with the Huns, Menenius was the leader; and in the fierce incessant warfare thus carried on, he seemed to find his only consolation, his only enjoyment. At other times, he would sit sad and gloomy, his vacant eye fixed unobserving upon space, and his heart meditating sad dreams. In the visions of the night, too, when weariness dimmed the fire in his heart, and suffered his eyes to close, the white and fluttering object he had pursued in the fight of Azimantium would again be carried off, while imagination would fill up all that sight had not been able to ascertain, and the form of Honoria, torn away from him by the barbarian, would hold forth its phantom arms, and implore aid and succour in vain. Then his vigorous and manly limbs would writhe with the agony of his dreaming soul, till horror and despair would burst the bands of sleep, and he would start again upon his feet to wreak his great revenge upon the enemy. And yet there was a quality in his soul which--although while an adverse sword was drawn, or a threatening bow was bent, his step was through blood and carnage, his path was terror and death,--yet there was a quality in his soul which suspended the uplifted blow when the suppliant and the conquered clasped his knee; and many was the train captives which he sent home to the city; the pledges of future security and respect to Azimantium. At length when seventy cities had fallen before the Scythian hordes, and nought but ruins were left to say where they had been, and to point to after ages the sad moral of an empire's decay, the weak Theodosius, unable to protect his subjects, or defend himself, agreed to treat with the mighty Barbarian, and to buy precarious peace with gold and concession, when he dared not purchase true security by the sword. Attila dictated the conditions and Theodosius yielded to all his demands but one, with which the emperor had no power to comply; and that was, that the city of Azimantium should restore the captives taken from the Huns. Attila felt how little power a feeble and degenerate monarch could have over a fearless, noble, unconquerable race; and he felt, too, that all his own power, great and battle-born as it was, could scarcely suffice to crush the hearts of Azimantium. The monarch of all the Eastern empire confessed his inability to compel the restoration of the captives; and Attila, the terror of the world, the scourge of God, the conqueror of nations, treated on equal terms with the small city of Thrace. Oh, how the heart of Menenius beat, when the monarch of the Huns, by the mouth of his envoys, proposed that all prisoners taken between his myriads and the city of Azimantium should be mutually restored! And oh, how his bosom heaved, when, surrounded by the Hunnish cavalry, the little knot of Azimantine captives were conducted up the hill! But were was Honoria? where was the beloved?