"Now summon Gelimer, the King of the Vandals," said the General, loudly. And from the gateway into the square came Gelimer, his hands fettered with a chain of gold. One of the numerous pointed crowns found in the royal treasure had been pressed upon his long tangled locks, and over his ragged old purple mantle and penitent's girdle was flung a magnificent new cloak of the same royal stuff. He had submitted to everything unresistingly, motionless and silent, only at first he had objected to the crown; then he said gently, "Be it so--my crown of thorns." In the same unresisting, unmoved silence he now, like a walking corpse, crossed with slow, slow steps the space,--possibly three hundred feet,--which separated him from Belisarius. While, at the mention of his name, a loud whisper, mingled with occasional exclamations, had run through the ranks, all the many thousands were silent now that they saw him: scorn, triumph, curiosity, vindictiveness, pity no longer found any expression; they were silenced by the majesty of this spectacle, the majesty of utter misery. The captive King crossed the square entirely alone. No other prisoner, not even a guard or warrior accompanied him. He kept his eyes, shaded by long lashes, fixed upon the ground; they were sunk deep in their sockets; his pale cheeks, too, were deeply sunken; the thin fingers of his right hand were clenched around a small wooden cross. Blood--visible when the mantle slipped back in walking--was trickling from his girdle, down his naked limbs, in slow drops upon the white sand of the square. All were silent; a deathlike stillness pervaded the wide space; the people held their breath until the hapless King stood before Belisarius. Deeply moved, the Roman General, too, found no words, but kindly extended his right hand to the man before him. Gelimer now raised his large eyes, saw Belisarius in all the glitter of gold and armor, glanced quickly around the three sides of the square, beheld the magnificence and pomp of warlike splendor, the victors' banners fluttering high in the air, on the ground the standards and sparkling royal treasure of the Vandals. Suddenly--we all started as this corpse burst into such wild emotion--he flung both hands, with their long gold chain, above his head, clasping them so that the metal clashed; the cross slipped from his grasp; he uttered a shrill, terrible laugh. "Vanity! _All_ is vanity!" he shrieked, and threw himself prone upon the sand just at the feet of Belisarius. "Is this illness?" whispered the General to me. "Oh, no," I answered in the same tone. "It is despair--or piety. He thinks that life is not worth living; everything human, everything earthly, even his people and his kingdom are sinful, vain, empty. Is this the last word of Christianity?"