'Your servant Ulpius stops not on the journey that leads him to your repeopled shrines! Blood, crime, danger, pain--pride and honour, joy and rest, have I strewn like sacrifices at your altars' feet! Time has whirled past me; youth and manhood have lain long since buried in the hidden Lethe which is the portion of life; age has wreathed his coils over my body's strength, but still I watch by your temples and serve your mighty cause! Your vengeance is near! Monarchs of the world, your triumph is at hand!' He remained for some time in the same position, looking fixedly up into the trackless darkness above him, drinking in the sounds which--alternately rising and sinking--still floated round him.

The trembling gleam of his lantern fell red and wild upon his livid countenance.

His shaggy hair floated in the cold breezes that blew by him.

At this moment he would have appeared from a distance, like a phantom of fire perishing in a mist of darkness; like a Gnome in adoration in the bowels of the earth; like a forsaken spirit in a solitary purgatory, watching for the advent of a glimpse of beauty, or a breath of air.
At length he aroused himself from his trance, trimmed with careful hand his guiding lantern, and set forward to penetrate the breadth of the great rift he had just entered.
He moved on in an oblique direction several feet, now creeping over the tops of the foundation arches, now skirting the extremities of protrusions in the ruined brick-work, now descending into dark slimy rubbish-choked chasms, until the rift suddenly diminished in all directions.
The atmosphere was warmer in the place he now occupied; he could faintly distinguish patches of dark moss, dotted here and there over the uneven surface of the wall; and once or twice, some blades of long flat grass, that grew from a prominence immediately above his head, were waved in his face by the wind, which he could now feel blowing through the narrow fissure that he was preparing to enlarge.

It was evident that he had by this time advanced to within a few feet of the outer extremity of the wall.
'Numerian wanders after his child through the streets,' muttered the Pagan, as he deposited his lantern by his side, bared his trembling arms, and raised his iron bar, 'the slaves of his neighbour the senator are forth to pursue me.