With the chance of an assault the prospects of Paganism had brightened--with the certainty of a blockade, they sunk immediately into disheartening gloom! Filled with these thoughts, Ulpius paced backwards and forwards in his solitary retreat, utterly abandoned by the exaltation of feeling which had restored to his faculties in the morning, the long-lost vigour of their former youth.

Once more, he experienced the infirmities of his age; once more he remembered the miseries that had made his existence one unending martyrdom; once more he felt the presence of his ambition within him, like a judgment that he was doomed to welcome, like a curse that he was created to cherish.

To say that his sensations at this moment were those of the culprit who hears the order for his execution when he had been assured of a reprieve, is to convey but a faint idea of the fierce emotions of rage, grief, and despair, that now united to rend the Pagan's heart.
Overpowered with weariness both of body and mind, he flung himself down under the shade of some bushes that clothed the base of the wall above him.

As he lay there--so still in his heavy lassitude that life itself seemed to have left him--one of the long green lizards, common to Italy, crawled over his shoulder.

He seized the animal--doubtful for the moment whether it might not be of the poisonous species--and examined it.