She sank down at his feet, on a high, soft cushion covered with leopard skins, while Gibamund paced slowly up and down the spacious hall, often gazing out through the lofty arched window over the wide sea. No light was burning in the apartment; but the full moon, which meanwhile had risen above the dark flood and the harbor wall, poured in the full splendor of her rays, which, falling on the features of the three noble human beings, illumined them with a spectral light. "I will not," Hilda began, "as Zazo and my Gibamund have repeatedly done, until you wrathfully forbade it, warn you against this priest, who--" With neither impatience nor anger, Gelimer interrupted: "Who first discovered the wiles of Pudentius; who revealed to us the treachery of Hilderic; to whom alone I am indebted for my escape from assassination that night; who has saved the kingdom of the Vandals from the snare." Gibamund paused in his walk. "Yes, it is true. I had almost said, _unfortunately_ true. For I would rather have owed it to any other man." "It is so strikingly true that even our Zazo, who at first accused him harshly to me, could scarcely find any objection to mutter, when I took the brilliant man among my councillors and intrusted to him (for he is an expert in letter-writing) the care of the correspondence. And how unweariedly he has toiled since, priest and chancellor at the same time! I marvel at the number of papers he lays before me every morning; I do not believe he sleeps three hours." "Men who neither sleep nor fight, drink nor kiss, are unnatural to me," cried Gibamund, laughing. "I do not warn," said Hilda, "but I ask"--she laid her hand lightly on the King's arm--"how does it happen, how is it possible, that you, the warlike Prince of the Vandals, loved this gloomy Roman, this renegade, better than all who stood nearest to you?" "There you are mistaken, fair Hilda," smiled the King, stroking her hand. "Yes," she answered, correcting herself; "doubtless you love Ammata better; he is the apple of your eye." "My father, on his death-bed, confided this brother (he was then only a prattling boy) to my care. I cherished him in my inmost heart, and reared him as though he were my own child," said Gelimer, tenderly. "It is not love," he went on, "that binds me to Verus. What constrains me to revere in him my guardian spirit on earth, to look up to him with ardent gratitude, with blind, credulous trust, is the confidence, nay, the superhuman certainty: yes," here he shuddered slightly, "it is a revelation of God, a miracle." "A miracle?" Hilda repeated. "A revelation?" Gibamund asked incredulously, stopping before them.