It is over! Thank God, or whoever else may be entitled to our gratitude. Three months, full of utter weariness, we remained encamped before the mountain of defiance. It is March; the nights are still cool, but at noonday the sun already burns with scorching heat. An attempted flight was baffled by treachery; Verus, Gelimer's chancellor and closest friend, deserves the credit of this base deed. Obeying the priest's directions we sought the Soloes concealed on the southern slope who were to accompany the fugitives to the sea, but found only the prints of numerous hoofs. We blocked the outlet. Then the King voluntarily, without any farther trouble, offered to surrender. Fara was greatly delighted; he would have granted any condition that enabled him to deliver the King a captive to Belisarius, who was even more impatient for the end of the war than we. At the entrance of the ravine, which we had never been able to penetrate, I received the little band of Vandals--about twenty were left. The Moors, too, came down; at Gelimer's earnest entreaty, Fara immediately set them at liberty. These Vandals--what images of misery, famine, privation, sickness, suffering! I do not understand how they could still hold out, still offer resistance. They could scarcely carry their arms, and willingly allowed us to take them. But when I saw and talked with Gelimer--crushed though he is now--I realized that this man's mind and will could control, rule, support others as long as he desired. I have never seen any human being like him,--a monk, an enthusiast, and yet a royal hero. I entreated Fara to let me shelter him in my tent. While we could scarcely restrain the others from immoderately greedy indulgence in meats and other foods of which they had long been deprived, he voluntarily continued the fast so long forced upon him. Fara with difficulty induced him to drink some wine; the Herulian probably feared that his prisoner would die on the way, before he could deliver him to Belisarius. For a long time he refused; but when I suggested that he was probably seeking death in this way, he at once drank the wine and ate some bread.